by David Smith
‘Will that work?’
Park shrugged. ‘We don’t know. But it’s the only interface that doesn’t depend on the primary processors.’
Romanov mulled it over. ‘Do you think Carver could work out what’s going on?’
Park shook his head. ‘Probably not. But I wasn’t thinking of getting Carver to interface with it . . . ‘
‘You’d do it?’ asked Romanov, surprise written all over her face.
Park was horrified. ‘No!! I was thinking Lieutenant Sato might be willing to do it.’
Sato looked equally horrified, but then looked at the expectant faces gathered around her and said timidly ‘Uh, well I guess so.’
Sato thought about it before adding ‘Just make sure Carver’s damned dog isn’t around when we’re doing this. Last time that mutt came down here, I had my head in one of the consoles and the damned thing had to be dragged off me. He ruined my skirt.’
Romanov ignored Sato’s comments and rubbed her chin pensively. ‘Carver has a spare neural interface. We could link two people to the computer.’
Park nodded enthusiastically before noticing that the Ship’s Engineering Officer was staring at him expectantly.
His mouth went dry. ‘Ah. Of course someone like . . . um . . . Billy Ottershaw?‘
‘Doesn’t know anything about the PILOCCs architecture’ stated Romanov bluntly.
‘Perhaps someone like Crewman Garcia?’ squeaked Park. ‘His knowledge of cybernetics . . . ‘
‘ . . . will be very useful in adapting the neural interfaces to suit yours and Sato’s cerebral cortex’ concluded Romanov. ‘An excellent suggestion, Park.’
Park gulped and gave in to the inevitable.
--------------------
Crewman Xavi Garcia tweaked the neural interface. Xavi was one of the older members of the crew, and looked older still. He’d lived a rock’n’roll lifestyle as a guitarist in a band for much of his life, and excessive consumption of strong alcohol and illegal narcotics had aged both body and brain beyond his sixty-two years. He was using a tricorder to examine the neural interface and held it closer to his face, squinting. He looked confused and moved the tricorder further away, still squinting.
Eventually he threw the tricorder on the desk, muttering ‘Don’t matter a damn anyway.’
Park looked at Sato who could only shrug.
Garcia held up the interface. It looked like a curved crucifix that had been cut out of a space helmet, and was all matt black except for a small display on the shortest arm.
‘Right guys, here’s the deal . . . ‘ began Garcia.
Sato and Park waited expectantly, but nothing followed. Garcia seemed to have nodded off and after exchanging a glance with Park, Sato gave the crewman’s arm a gentle tug.
Garcia carried on as if nothing had happened. ‘ . . . these interfaces will take a while to connect themselves to your brain as they’re currently configured for Carver: they’ll need to adjust to how your brain is laid out. Once you’re in, you might find that your mind will struggle to make sense of what’s coming your way. It’s someone else’s thought patterns and they won’t think or remember things exactly like you do, but your brain won’t take long to make sense of it all.’
‘Ok, first things first, I’ll set up an exit code.’ Garcia thought about this and then pulled up an old video clip on a monitor. ‘Pay attention to this, guys.’
On the screen, a pretty young girl in a blue checked dress clicked her peculiar red sequined slippers together as an older woman wearing a silver crown waved a wand and urged her to say “there’s no place like home . . . “
As they watched, Garcia scanned their brainwaves with tricorder and said ‘Ok, cool, that’s your exit sequence. Concentrate on what you’ve just seen and think or say “there’s no place like home . . . “. I’ll programme the interface to begin the disengagement protocol when it senses that phrase.’
Sato nodded but was clearly still nervous. ‘What do we need an exit code for? And how do we get out if things go wrong?’
Garcia carried on working, not recognising the note of worry in Sato’s voice as he explained ‘The interface is complicated doohickey. It’ll take a while to connect to your brain, then just as much time to disconnect. It’s always best to have a trigger phrase that starts that process instantly. If you say that phrase three times, the interface will pull you out immediately. But that’s just a precaution; I reckon you’ll be ok.’
‘You “reckon” we’ll be ok?’ asked Sato with a note of rising panic in her voice.
‘Yeah, man!’ smiled Garcia ‘Don’t sweat it.’
Sato was still concerned. ‘That’s easy for you to say. I don’t know anything about these interfaces. What if something goes wrong with them?’
‘Look, the interfaces are fine. Once the nano-filaments are inserted into your brain . . . ‘
Park didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Nano-filaments?? Brain??’
Garcia looked surprised that they didn’t understand what appeared to be a very simple piece of equipment to a cyberneticist like himself. ‘Yeah dude. How did you think these things work? You’re hard-wired into the computer: About five hundred individual nano-metre-wide filaments are inserted into key nodes in the cerebral cortex. That’s the only way we can get the data into a format that makes sense to the brain.’
‘Is that safe?’ gulped Park’
‘Yeah, pretty much foolproof’ nodded Garcia. ‘We hardly ever turn people into zombies. And even if we do, they nearly always recover. Well enough to breathe without help anyhow. But don’t sweat the small stuff.’
‘That’s hardly small stuff!’ squeaked Sato.
‘It is compared to losing your consciousness inside a computer and being just a comatose husk for the rest of your life’ mumbled Garcia.
‘COULD THAT HAPPEN???’
Garcia seemed to notice their terror for the first time and tried to back-track. ‘Uh, like, no. Not really. You’d have to be really, uh, unlucky.’
Park would have had second thoughts, but he’d had those several hours ago. He was now onto fifty-eighth thoughts. ‘Actually’ he said nervously, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’
Garcia appeared not to hear and moving far quicker than Park would have thought possible, he jammed the headset onto Park’s skull.
‘Chill man, it’s all good.’
--------------------
There was an instant of pain and the world turned off.
Normality warped and flexed.
Reality rocked and rolled.
Perception wibbled and woo-wooed.
Park had a peculiar sensation that the inside of his head was fizzing, like a soda-pop. He thought he could smell data and the metallic taste of machine-code flooded what he thought was his mouth. He became aware that his eyes had stopped working but that didn’t stop him seeing a universe full of colours that swirled around him while a gentle breeze of Mozart concertos ruffled the hair on his head.
His initial panic was replaced by curiosity, and then wonder as his mind perceived a world through senses that were completely unrestrained by any physical barrier. He could smell individual molecules. He could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum. He could feel the texture of the optronic circuits through which data passed.
He was vaguely aware that all of this was a result of his brain trying to make sense of the data streams coming through the neural interface from the computer. It therefore came as something of a shock to suddenly realise he was standing in a forest.
Park looked down. He could see his hands, his feet, his whole body, still wearing his uniform. He could even see the small stain on his cuff where he’d accidently dipped it in his soup at lunch time.
But he was stood in a twilight forest, the air thick with the smell of tree-sap, moss and dampness. Unfamiliar stars were beginning to twinkle in the black-blue twilight sky above. It was cold and he could see his breath hanging in front of him, faintly illuminated by a bright crescent mo
on already rising high.
An owl hooted in the distance, disturbing a flock of birds that flew off squawking in a flutter of feathers and rustling leaves.
‘Park!’ whispered Sato ‘This is soooo weird!’
She was stood just behind him and like himself was staring in amazement at her hands and the forest around them.
‘Where are we?’ asked Sato.
Park looked around himself again. ‘I don’t know. I suspect “where” isn’t the right word.’
He took in the detail of the dim, slightly forbidding landscape. They were in a small clearing with just enough light to suggest that the sun was setting behind a curtain of tall deciduous trees. Leaf litter rustled beneath his feet and wood-lice scattered as he nudged a rotten branch with the toe of his boot. ‘This isn’t what I expected.’
Sato shivered. ‘Me neither. But then, I don’t know what I did expect. Is this real?’
Park wasn’t sure, but knew more about the design of the experimental PILOCC (Prototype Integral Logical Organic Component Computer) than anyone else in the fleet. ‘It’s definitely not real. I think what we’re experiencing is an amalgam of some of the memories of the engrams used to construct the computers artificial personality.’
Sato reached out and touched a tree. ‘It feels real.’
Park shrugged. ‘You’ve touched a tree before. The computer’s working memory is filled with a memory of a forest and the interface is stimulating your own memories of how touching a tree feels.’
‘So what do we do?’
Park scratched his head and was temporarily lost, wondering if what he could feel was his fingers scratching his head in the real world, or if this was just his mind being stimulated artificially and imagining how his fingers would feel if they scratched at his head. He stared at his unreal fingers and had to be dragged back to their mission by Lieutenant Sato.
‘Park! You ok?’
‘Yeah, yeah! Sorry, I’m just struggling to get my head around this.’
He stared at the forest. There was a narrow footpath leading away into the trees, which seemed to be the only way out of the little clearing.
Thinking aloud, he said ‘It’s not a real place. This forest is the construct of one or more memory engrams. If that’s the case, that path is the construct of those engrams too. No-one would think of something for no reason, so the path must have a purpose. It must go somewhere.’
He looked at Sato who shrugged and suggested ‘Well I guess we’re here to investigate’ before heading off down the path.
It wasn’t a well trodden path and in the dim light they missed small twigs and brambles draped across the path that snatched at their clothes and hair.
They seemed to walk for hours but both were vaguely aware that time wasn’t passing in the conventional sense: their journey seemed to be a collection of points in time rather than progress along a path.
They were just becoming used to the concept of the non-journey when things changed again. The path suddenly became a clearing and as they became aware of that, they became aware that they weren’t alone. They’d stumbled into a crude encampment, with a small fire smouldering in the middle.
A group of a dozen or so disparate but oddly familiar looking figures stood around the camp. One sat on his haunches poking the fire, but oddly two were wrestling at one side of the camp while most of the others looked on dejectedly.
The only thing they all had in common was that they looked terribly out of place. They wore a variety of clothes, some modern, some of styles not worn for centuries. Most wore suits of some description, a few wore lab coats and one sat in an old motorised wheel-chair.
They looked tired and hungry. Their clothes were dirty, tattered and torn, and had been badly repaired in places. Some carried what were obviously make-shift weapons, but clearly looked uncomfortable and unfamiliar with these items.
Park considered activating the exit process, but as he looked around the group he realised that these strangers looked just as frightened as he felt.
The man poking the fire literally squealed in alarm and all the others suddenly stopped what they were doing and stared at the newcomers.
An untidy man in a tattered and torn business suit stepped forward and threatened them with a crude and badly made spear. ‘Who are you? Why has he sent you?’
The stone point of the spear fell off as he shook it in their direction, and dangled on the end of the piece of string that had previously been holding it in place. Park noticed that the shaft of the spear was the branch of a tree, with a pronounced curve and still sporting some foliage.
If the untidy man noticed the tip fall, he showed no sign, and still held the branch as if he could do some serious damage with it.
‘Speak up damn you!’ he growled.
Sato looked at Park who shrugged. ‘I’m Lieutenant Jasmine Sato, of the Federation starship Tiger. I’m here . . . ‘
She paused. How do you express yourself to a person who’s probably the figment of a computer’s imagination?
She sighed. ‘We’re investigating a problem that’s manifested itself on our ship, but seems to originate here.’
Park stared curiously at the man holding the spear and suddenly had an epiphany. ‘You . . . you’re Niels Bohr!!’
The man looked surprised. ‘You know me?’
‘Yes!’ squeaked Park. ‘You’re famous! Well among physicists, anyhow.’
A smile appeared on the man’s face ‘You should tell that to Newton and Einstein.’
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to where the two men had temporarily stopped wrestling. As he looked at them Park realised they were indeed Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
Bohr was rolled his eyes. ‘They’ve been arguing over who’s most famous all day and it all came to a head when Einstein said Newton was behind the times.’
Behind Bohr, the two famous physicists glared at each other evilly, but seemed to have got over it until Stephen Hawking rolled past and said something quietly.
Einstein leapt up. ‘I don’t care if you’re disabled or not!! One more comment like that and we’ll find out how clever you sound when I steal your batteries.’
Hawking rolled away laughing electronically. ‘Ha! “God does not play dice!” Haha! Hahaha!’
Einstein ran after him ‘Right that’s it! You’re taking a drive over the first bloody cliff I can find!!’
Richard Feynman chased after Einstein, loudly trying to remind him that violence would solve nothing, but most of the physicists just turned away sadly, shaking their heads.
Bohr sighed. ‘This is ridiculous. We’re fighting for survival and yet we still let our egos run amok.’
His statement caught Sato’s attention. ‘Survival? Are we in danger??’
Bohr nodded. ‘Yes. There were twenty of us to begin with. His attacks are getting increasingly sophisticated.’
‘His attacks? Who’s attacking you?’
Bohr shook his head, his fear and frustration clearly visible. ‘We don’t know! There is no logic to our situation. We don’t know why we are here, or even where “here” is, much less why someone seeks to kill us!’
Sato looked at Park. The mention of danger had made him nervous and he was looking around the clearing anxiously.
Bohr continued. ‘Gell-man was the first to fall. The killer walked up to him, smiling, and thrust a knife into his heart. We knew what he was then, even if we didn’t know who he was. He’s attacked many times since. Every time we think we’re prepared, he attacks us in a new and unexpected way. We’ve lost Plank, Fermi, Faraday. No one has seen Heisenberg for days. We think the killer got him too, although it’s not a certainty.’
‘Can’t you protect yourselves? You seem to have weapons?’ asked Sato.
Bohr shook his head. ‘We thought about fighting back, but our enemy has made his home in an impregnable castle a few miles away.’
‘Can’t you move further away? Get out of harm’s way?’
Bohr looked shaken ‘Don’t you think we’ve tried that?? We’re not fighters! The first thing we did was to run, but there’s something wrong with this place. It’s almost like a small bounded infinity of its own. No matter which path you follow, or even if you strike out through the woods, after a few miles you end up where you started. We’re trapped, and he always finds us.’
Park tugged on Sato’s sleeve uncertainly, like a small child. ‘Lieutenant, should we stay if we’re in danger?’
Sato tried to reassure him, discretely whispering. ‘There’s no imminent danger, Park, we’ll be fine: don’t forget that none of this is real.’
She turned back to ask Bohr another question but before she could speak, an arrow sprouted in his chest. He looked down at the arrow and the ominous, spreading red stain around it in surprise rather than pain. He had time to look up, blinking at Park and Sato before slowly collapsing to his knees and falling down face first in the dirt.
Sato stared, horrified, at the fallen physicist but before they could do anything the old motorised wheelchair came skittering out of the woods, it’s back bristling with more arrows. An electronic screech cut through the stunned silence:‘RUN!! HE’S BACK!!’
All hell broke loose.
A dozen physicists sprang up in alarm. Arrows whistled out of the trees around them, causing them to flee in panic. Park watched, horrified as Richard Feynman staggered into the camp, an arrow embedded in his shoulder, collapsing as a second and then a third pierced his body.
Park panicked and hid behind Sato. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
Sato was nervous but tried to remain focused. ‘Don’t panic, Park. Remember, this is just a representation, none of it’s real.’
A stray arrow struck her in the arm.
She looked down and stared at it in amazement.
Park breathed a sigh of relief as it seemed not to affect her, but suddenly Sato let out a shriek of pain and gabbled ‘There’snoplacelikehome,there’snoplacelikehome,there’snoplacelikehome . . . ‘
Suddenly she wasn’t there, and Park stood frozen as more arrows whistled through the air around him. He watched in terror as another physicist was struck by an arrow, stumbling back to lean against a tree and staring in disbelief at the arrow embedded in his ribs.