Virtuality

by H. L. Wegley

  They walked into a mid-sized office where dozens of stacks of journals, magazines, books, and stapled papers surrounded them, some on a small table, others on the floor. Hundreds of books filled the shelves lining two walls of the office. But, on the professor’s desk, were only a closed laptop, a copy of some scientific journal, a pen and a notepad.

  Vince and Jess took seats across the desk from the professor.

  Jess took Vince’s hand. She squeezed and nodded.

  “Dr. Scoggins, when Paul died last week, I inherited controlling interest in Virtuality Incorporated. I’m an English major and an author, so managing a growing high-tech company is way out of my comfort zone. That’s why I hired—”

  The frown Jess gave him stopped Vince. He hadn’t hired her. There had been no talk about pay or any such thing. She had simply started helping him because he needed her.

  “Please continue, Vince.” Scoggins waved him on with an open hand.

  “I understand Paul had discussions with you about Virtuality’s technology. Jess and I have serious concerns, probably the same concerns as Paul. We would like to know what you told him and then get your take on some things that have happened since I took over Virtuality.”

  “I suppose you also want to hear about my latest research findings?”

  “Yes. Especially what your research has revealed about virtual reality, video games, and any related applications of virtual reality?”

  “First, let me say that video games are becoming a big problem, particularly with young men ages twenty-one to thirty. About fifteen percent of these men worked zero weeks last year. Thirty-five percent of them are living at home with their parents or a close relative, which helps enable video game abuse. These and other statistics clearly indicate that many young men are choosing to stay at home and play video games. And now the abuse is impacting young women as well.”

  “About the young men—I can believe those statistics based on what I’ve seen among my friends in Denver. Dr. Scoggins, you know Virtuality has an Army contract for an advanced training system. Are you aware of other research or development that the DOD is performing in this area?”

  “Fortunately, the DOD seems to be focusing on the positive side of this technology, trying to isolate and identify the elements of video games most conducive to human learning. The Navy and Marine Corps are interested in using the technology where jobs require substantial training time on simulators, such as sonar technicians, radar operators, pilots, and even surgeons. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command is already using augmented reality—referred to as AR—to train some of their gunners.”

  “Augmented reality?” It was the first time Vince had heard that term. “Can you give me an example of an AR application?”

  “Okay. Here’s one scenario. You wear a headset, including goggles to provide enhanced visual display. Your GPS guides you, visually and by voice. You walk down a street looking for a certain restaurant, a yellow line appears on the sidewalk and leads you to the restaurant. That’s AR”

  “Cool. Can it keep me from being hit by a car?” Vince grinned.

  “Perhaps, someday. But, consider this about AR—it can enhance your life and it doesn’t necessarily lock out other people while doing so. But, with virtual reality, you’re in your own world, closing out reality. Real-world social experiences are gone. Over time, VR will cause people to drift apart. Social skills will vanish. Perhaps the ability to socialize, and the desire to do so, will also vanish. Some may permanently drop out of society, preferring their own virtual world to the real one.”

  “With all the VR gadgets and games coming on the market, that doesn’t bode well for America,” Vince said.

  Jess folded her hands on the professor’s desk. “I don’t understand what’s so addictive about video games that people would prefer a game to life in the real world?”

  Scoggins rocked back in his big office chair. “Video games meet some of the needs that are being neglected by modern society.”

  “Not any of my needs,” Jess huffed.

  “But think about this, Ms. Jamison. The complexity and high-population density in society doesn’t allow full expression of human cultural needs—you know, things we experience only in close groups. There are simply too many people in our individual social networks—one-hundred friends on Facebook, a hundred more on Instagram and Snapchat, the thirty or forty people we frequently text or email. There are so many people that individuals don’t see their own existence or their work as being impactful or being important or meaningful. That feeling of not really mattering is amplified if one works for a large corporation. Nothing these employees do seems to matter. Consequently, they seek a world where they can be important, where what they do matters, and where they can see immediate positive results of their actions. A bad guy pops up and you shoot him, saving all your buddies and racking up record scores.”

  Scoggins paused. “Video games came along like a perfect storm for our times, sweeping people into virtual worlds because the real world wasn’t meeting their needs. The short answer to your question—video games tune in to basic psychological needs.”

  “Dr. Scoggins, we suspect that some of the third-party people who want control of Virtuality come from the adult entertainment world. They may even have ties to organized crime,” Vince said.

  “I hadn’t gotten to the baser appeals of games—violence, power, and sex. Most games provide immediate rewards for certain behaviors, giving positive reinforcement when a person makes progress in the game. If you add in the satisfaction of our basest proclivities, it will produce an even stronger addictive force. I don’t believe I need to provide graphic descriptions of what we’re talking about here.”

  “Please don’t,” Jess said. “Sex sells. Let’s just leave it at that. But I worked for Paul, coding algorithms for lossless compression and decompression of recorded, digitized nerve signals. I heard him talking about remote nerve stimulation and deep brain stimulation. Couldn’t they play a role too?”

  Scoggins nodded. “Brain stimulation has been used for medical applications for some time now. We’re making many advancements in this area. Over two-hundred thousand people with Parkinson’s have had surgery to receive deep-brain stimulators, implants that send pulses of electricity through areas of brain tissue to control their tremors. This has given back their lives to many people, people who were in diapers, confined to wheel chairs, and barely able to talk.”

  Vince could see where Jess was headed with her questions. He let her take the lead.

  “As I mentioned, I wrote code to handle nerve signals,” Jess said. “Has anyone been recording and playing back nerve signals?”

  “Let me start with what I know, and we’ll see if we can answer your question,” Scoggins said. “Brain-Computer Interfaces, BCI, are being developed to control robotic limbs for people who have lost arms or legs. These show great promise, if we can record enough of the right neural signals.”

  “So it has been done to some degree,” Jess said. “I’ve been thinking … maybe that’s where Patrick comes in. He was a medical student, and now he has a graduate degree in Computer Science.”

  “Based on my discussion with Paul, I believe you’re correct about Patrick’s role. But beyond restorative medical applications, some companies are working on building brain implants to try to give superhuman powers to healthy people. That I consider to be an unhealthy application.”

  “Superhuman powers?” Vince said. “Could that be what the military is doing?”

  “That’s possible,” the professor said. “But it’s unhealthy and unwise.”

  “Terribly unwise,” Jess said. “I don’t think that’s what’s going on at Virtuality, because Paul wouldn’t have agreed to it. But could artificial intelligence have any role in all of this? I didn’t have enough visibility into Virtuality to know if they’re also using AI. But I do know Steven Hawking warned that AI could bring about the end of the human race.”

  Scoggins chuc
kled. “That would seem to be true only if one has the wrong model for the human brain—actually a wrong understanding of who and what a human being is.”

  Jess gave him a crooked smile. “So you’re claiming to know more than Stephen Hawking?”

  Doctor Scoggins raised an eyebrow. “We all have our own opinions, Jess. And each of us thinks we know better than the others do.”

  “Nice dodge, professor.” Now, Vince was the one giving the crooked smile.

  “I wasn’t trying to dodge the question,” Scoggins said. “An equivalence of biological intelligence with digital intelligence—it’s never going to happen. But then I base my conclusion partly on my worldview, which includes a biblical definition of who we are as human beings, Imago Dei, created in the image of God. Perhaps my biblical understanding isn’t quite correct, but I would stake my professional reputation on it.” Scoggins pointed to a journal lying on the corner of his desk. “As a matter of fact, I already have.”

  “So that’s what Paul meant when he told me he didn’t exist in his brain. It was only an interface to the real person.”

  “Exactly. It’s part of our dualistic nature—physical and spiritual.”

  “Physical and spiritual,” Vince said. “I think I understand what you mean by dualism, but could you explain, once more, exactly what you mean when you use the term?”

  “Sure. Let me state in another way the differences between materialism and dualism. Dualism says that our mind—where we think and exist—is separate from the matter that comprises the brain. Mind and material are separate categories. Neither one can be reduced to, or can be said to contain, the other.”

  “If that were true …” Jess massaged her forehead, then looked up. “Couldn’t we demonstrate it, somehow, in a lab? I mean, we could have mental states that don’t correspond to physical states of the brain and vice versa.”

  “And that’s a brilliant deduction, Ms. Jamison. Yes, we have demonstrated in a laboratory that mental function and brain function don’t always correlate. Which means that mental function is not identical to brain function.”

  Jess shook her head. “Then why aren’t we hearing about this from some source—science, the media?”

  “Journal articles have been published about this. The evidence is out there. One researcher even demonstrated that acts of the will, making choices, have no corresponding brain activity. Volition does not require a brain.”

  “That has been demonstrated in a lab?” Jess’s eyebrows nearly touched.

  “Yes. But, to someone who has literally sold their soul to a materialistic view of the universe, it takes more than a little evidence to convince them to change their mind and admit that there is more to us, and this universe, than just the physical. For goodness sake, we might find that we’re accountable to some higher being.” Scoggins chuckled. “It’s frustrating, but such is the world of academia.”

  “Let’s see. Where was I?” Scoggins paused. “Unfortunately, here’s what’s happening in mainstream brain research, trying to understand how our minds store and recall information.” The professor paused again. “Do you really want to hear this, or should we move on to stimulating nerves?”

  “I think we both need to hear it,” Jess said.

  “Yeah,” Vince said. “Evidently, Paul thought the subject was important enough to tell me about it only seconds before he died.”

  “I see.” Doctor Scoggins sighed heavily, looked down at his desk, and rubbed his chin. “Okay. You asked for it.” He looked up and grinned, then pointed to a large picture of the human brain mounted on his wall. “Our brains have a little shy of a billion neurons in them, highly interconnected. There are several thousand connections to each neuron. Current research is going bottom-up to study the shape, size and interconnections of these neurons in hope of finding their role, behaviorally and biologically.”

  “With all those connections and possible paths through the brain, good luck with that approach,” Jess said.

  “Besides all that complexity, that’s a materialistic view of human beings,” Vince said. “Mind equals matter.”

  Dr. Scoggins nodded. “That’s what this research incorrectly presupposes. But the problem with modern research goes even deeper. Suppose our theoretical models of the brain don’t reflect reality. And that could well be the case if, as Paul thought, the brain is an interface to something else, the real self, a spirit, which many who study theology believe to be the case. The mainstream research, studying neurons, might improve our efforts to help people with certain, specific brain dysfunctions, but we would never reach a complete understanding of the brain. And robots with human intelligence—you can forget that, unless you write the fantasy form of science-fiction.”

  Jess leaned forward in her chair. “What you’re saying is that the problem with current research isn’t even a scientific issue, it’s worldview-based. It’s the application of science to philosophy, you know, physics, to metaphysics?”

  “Bingo, Ms. Jamison. Most modern-day scientists are so steeped in their materialistic philosophies that they are completely close-minded about anything outside the domain of science. But their real problem is that they try to stretch science to include things outside its domain—applications of science that violate its metaphysical presuppositions.”

  “And they’re too stupid to see that!” Jess pounded her fist on Scoggins’ desk. “Sorry. I got a little, uh …”

  The professor chuckled. “Me too. It’s frustrating when these geniuses won’t even consider that human beings may have a spiritual component that explains things like self-awareness. And we can see that their bottom-up approach, and materialistic philosophy, will cause them to beat their brains against a brick wall they have built, while they work on problems they can never solve if they hold strictly to their materialistic worldview.”

  “They’re caught in a trap.” Vince shook his head. “A lab-rat trap.”

  “You’re right, Vince. It’s a trap with only one escape, an awareness of, and willingness to listen to, the God who made us.”

  Dr. Scoggins paused and sighed. “Well, I didn’t mean to take you so far afield.”

  “I think you kept us right on target,” Jess said. “How can Vince run Virtuality if he doesn’t understand the true reality behind the virtual reality of his company’s products?”

  “Well put,” Scoggins said. “But back to stimulating nerves in the body and the brain. Some scientists envision a day when we can upload our thoughts to a storage medium and download the thoughts of others. Many think this is purely fiction. But it isn’t entirely fiction, because people are doing some things today that require computer-brain interfaces, like the robotic arms and legs I mentioned.”

  “Vince, remember that guy, Walker, the one who gave me bad vibes?” Jess said.

  “The one you said acted like a druggie?”

  “Yes. Him.” Jess turned to the professor. “Has your research discovered any work being done that directly stimulates the brain in a manner similar to drugs?”

  “Well, the influence of transcranial, pulsated ultrasound on neuron activity is being researched with some success.”

  Vince straightened in his seat. “Ultrasound? You mean they actually blast people’s brains with ultrasonic radiation? I’m not going to volunteer for that experiment.”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Pulsed ultrasound can produce mechanical bioeffects with no heating or tissue damage. To stimulate a brain circuit, you must hit the target within approximately two millimeters. However, if you can do that, you don’t have to do surgery to do brain stimulation. This has implications for the treatment of diseases like Parkinson’s and some types of depression.”

  Dr. Scoggins’ comment on brain stimulation brought them to the salient question, the one most troubling to Vince. “Professor, that Psychology 101 rat with the electrode in the pleasure center of his brain—can we hit that same part of the brain with ultrasound and produce euphoria?”

  “Unfortun
ately, yes,” Scoggins said. “And that is a big problem. Can you imagine having a product that gives one an intense high, all the euphoria of the strongest drugs on the street—crack, meth, heroine—but without all the adverse health impacts of drugs?”

  Jess shuddered, visibly, at Dr. Scoggins’ words. “If that were turned loose on our population, wouldn’t nearly everyone become an addict? Who could resist something like that once they had tried it?”

  “You’re right, Jess. People may behave just like that rat. Sit there and push the lever, over, and over, and over, and over again. That’s the danger,” Scoggins said.

  Vince shook his head. “There’s more danger than that. A lot more.”

  Jess gave him her bug-eyed stare. “And what has that writer’s imagination of yours conjured up now, Vince van Gordon?”

  “A product like that could put the drug cartels out of business.”

  “Maybe out of the drug business,” Scoggins said. “But the cartels are masters at reinventing themselves. They’ve morphed to new drugs, to human trafficking, anything people demand that’s illegal.”

  “That raises two more questions,” Vince said as he looked at Jess. “Has someone leaked what Virtuality is doing and, secondly, are they trying to get in on the ground floor of the action?”

  “Vince, if you’re thinking it’s some cartel visionary that’s trying to kill us, you’ve got to consider other forms of organized crime,” Jess said. “Or it might even be someone from the porn industry.”

  “Well, we seem to have opened up a real can of worms,” Scoggins said.

  “What were we thinking?” Jess shook her head. “By having this meeting, we may have endangered you too, Dr. Scoggins. We were so intent on solving our own problems that we didn’t think about you.”

  “Yeah.” Vince said. “We should have thought this through and been more discreet about meeting with you.”

  “Don’t feel badly. I always knew that my research would eventually lead to this juncture. You’ve simply accelerated things a bit. And that’s probably good for our society. Well, it’s good if the powers that be will make the right decisions.”