The Intruder

by Greg Krehbiel

  Dr. Berry took the gray, book-shaped object from Dr. Jenkins and set it on the table, gesturing for Jeremy to stand next to her and observe. She was wearing a perfume with a very distinctive smell. It reminded him of something back home. Something his mother used to grow in the flower garden.

  Dr. Berry swept her hand over the flat surface of the workstation and it immediately lit up with a colorful and very complicated display. In the exact center of the screen was a bright dot with the words "Berry Clinic" displayed in dark lettering. Flowing out from the dot in all directions, almost like a child's maze, were lines to other "sites" -- that's what Dr. Berry called them. Each site seemed to have a unique graphic element, and some of them had explanatory text, holographic images, or animations.

  "You select a site by touching it," Dr. Berry explained, touching a graphic of a small green cube, which immediately moved to the center of the screen. The network of interconnecting lines and graphics adjusted instantaneously. "This line," she said, pointing to a white line that extended from the green cube to the Berry Clinic site, "traces your path, so you know where you've been."

  He studied the screen carefully, and then asked, "So this is what you can see when you have your visual display on? A screen like this just floats in the air in front of you."

  "Somewhat like this, although I have my implant set up differently. It is a visual display, like what you see here, with color and graphics, and, of course, with sound."

  She reached for the side of the screen and touched a figure that looked like a human ear. A piano concerto began to play very softly. Dr. Berry touched a new graphic element and the display rearranged itself to place the new site at the center of the screen. A voice said, You have entered the learning station.

  Jeremy noted that the graphic at the center of the screen had the words "learning station" in bright orange letters.

  "Now watch the upper left portion of the screen," Dr. Berry said. Jeremy looked at the dark corner, trying hard not to be distracted by all the other things on the screen. Suddenly a voice said, you have one message, and a bright red 1 flashed on and off.

  "Touch the flashing number, Jeremy," she said.

  When he did, the computer voice said, voice or text mode? and the display was overlaid with a white box, which contained two smaller boxes. In one was the word "voice," and in the other the word "text."

  "You can answer by speaking, or by touching the right button," she said.

  Jeremy touched the "voice" button and the computer said, Message for workstation three. Doctor Berry wishes to see you immediately.

  Jeremy looked away from the display and smiled at her. "Pretty neat."

  She smiled and swept her hand over the display again, causing it to go dark.

  "I'll make you a deal, Jeremy," she said. "You let me insert the communications implant, and I'll let you borrow this workstation for a while."

  "One last question first, please," he said.

  Dr. Berry's smile faded a touch, and she looked disappointed. "Okay," she said, and her tone of voice said, "but only one."

  "Show me how to turn it off before you put it in."

  Her pleasant smile returned and she said, "of course," very softly. She grabbed the hand-held instrument, which reminded Jeremy of an air-powered nail gun, and opened a side compartment, showing Jeremy the pea-sized implant. It was to be implanted just behind his ear, under the skin. To turn it off or on, he needed only to push it with his finger.

  "Can I ..." he began, but she interrupted.

  "You have to be quiet. Your jaw moves when you talk," she said.

  He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else while she put the medical instrument against his head. Jeremy felt a sudden, sharp pain, and then a warm, tingling sensation. He thought he might faint. Everything went black and his head began to swim, but then he recovered. Dr. Berry's hands were holding his head, and she was saying, slowly and gently, "it will pass, just be still. You'll be fine in a moment."

  Jeremy closed his eyes and tried to sense any new sounds, or any change at all from a minute ago. Was this thing already connected to his brain? Should he hear something?

  "It's not on yet," Dr. Berry said, as if she read his thought. She pushed very gently on the implant with her forefinger and he was suddenly distracted by a new sound.

  You have one message from Doctor Berry, a voice said. Or was it a voice? It was like nothing he had ever experienced before. He didn't hear it, but he didn't imagine it either. It wasn't the sound of a thought -- it wasn't that intimate, that much a part of him. It was from outside, in some sense, but inside his own head.

  "Has it connected itself to my brain that fast?" he asked.

  "No. Some of the connections form almost instantaneously, but others will take a while to develop. The connections with the ear form very quickly, but you probably don't want to know the physiology of it."

  Jeremy barely suppressed a shiver as he thought about it. He wasn't squeamish about blood, or operations, but he really didn't want to know about things inside his brain.

  "So how do I get the message?" he asked.

  "You have to train your implant to receive your own, unique signals," she said. "You're going to have to experiment with different mental images. One of them will trigger the implant. I can't tell you which one, because every brain is different. This training process is a big part of what forms the connections between your brain and the implant.

  "Go ahead and try something," she said.

  Jeremy tried to picture the old computer he used to see in Dr. Elizah's office back in the Community. He imagined reaching his hand into the computer and pulling out a piece of paper. He was surprised by a voice. The first voice was the computer's voice, which was followed by Dr. Berry's voice, but he wasn't "hearing" it. It was coming through his implant.

  From Doctor Berry. Jeremy, will you have dinner with me tonight? I'd like to check on your progress, and maybe you can tell me what it's like to live in a Community.

  "Very good," Dr. Berry's real voice said. "You did it on your first try," she said with surprise.

  "How did you know I got the message?" Jeremy asked with a suspicious look on his face.

  "You're in diagnostic mode for a few days. I can monitor anything you do with your implant."

  It seemed a rather rude intrusion, and something that she should have asked his permission for first. But perhaps that's standard policy, he thought.

  Dr. Berry turned the display unit back on and, after a few practiced taps, the unit showed a document titled, Learning to Use the MA7 Standard Communications Implant.

  "Take this home and study it," she said with the confident and authoritative tone of a doctor. As she handed him the book-sized display unit, she raised her eyebrows as if to say, "So?"

  He suddenly remembered the message.

  "Oh, that. I don't have any plans, so yes, I'd like that. Where do you want ..." he began, but she interrupted him.

  "Study this until you know how to send a message. Then send me a reply, telling me where you're staying. I'll meet you there at seven o'clock."

  Chapter 2

  In his excitement about the implant, Jeremy forgot all about Dr. Jenkins and hurried out of the clinic to get back to his hotel room and try his implant. But his hurry was frustrated by his uncertainty on how to get a ride back. Unlike every book he'd ever read about city life, the robotic shuttles didn't respond to a call or a whistle.

  "Can I help you?" a man asked, which surprised Jeremy a bit, since most people in Society didn't talk to one another on the street. The man was tall and powerfully built, dressed in a dark blue jumper suit. A web belt around his waist held a night stick, a pistol and several narrow strips of plastic, which Jeremy assumed were a type of handcuff. He was polite and friendly, but Jeremy sensed that this man knew his business.

  "Yes, sir," Jeremy replied. "I need to call a taxi."

  The policeman looked confused, until Jeremy clarified. "I just came from the doct
or," he pointed back up the stairs toward the clinic, "and my implant isn't functional right now."

  The policeman nodded. He looked away for a moment, and then back at Jeremy.

  "I've called for an automated shuttle. It will be here shortly," the policeman said. "Do you know how to tell it where to go, and how to pay?" Jeremy nodded and the police officer went about his patrol.

  No wonder the crime rate is so low, Jeremy thought.

  The shuttle arrived within a couple minutes. It was, to his relief, the same model he had ridden from the Advocate's office to the train station. He pressed his right thumb against the identification plate, pressed the "voice-command" button and told the onboard computer to take him to his hotel.

  The shuttle was remarkably quiet, which provided some time to read the file from the workstation Dr. Berry loaned him, although he had a hard time settling in to reading. He was still somewhat overwhelmed by the new experiences; riding in a vehicle that was driven by a computer, paying for his fare without cash, working on a computer that was no bigger than a large book, and certainly no heavier, and, the oddest thing, reading about a device that had just been installed in his head, which, at this very moment, was sending out microscopic filaments into the language and visual centers of his brain.

  He tried not to think too much about that.

  Jeremy read and re-read the sections of the tutorial that explained how his thoughts were transmitted to the implant, and while the concept seemed fairly simple, the technology it required fascinated him. The set-up program first asked him to "type" individual letters simply by thinking them. The implant's calibration routine simultaneously rewrote its internal programming and directed the neural connections to the most responsive areas of the brain. Since no two people responded to the implant exactly alike, the neural connections had to make a custom fit. All this took place in his head while the implant talked him through the whole calibration process.

  Once Jeremy got over his initial disorientation, the procedure was simple, and even somewhat relaxing. The implant spoke a random letter and Jeremy pictured the letter in his mind. This process continued for several minutes until the implant recognized the neural responses that corresponded to Jeremy's mental images of each letter.

  Once the success rate was acceptable, the implant changed modes. It spoke a word that Jeremy would have to spell by picturing the letters in the proper sequence. All of the words at this stage of the programming were commands: send, open, close, get, discard, save.

  Before he was half-way through the second mode, the shuttle-car stopped at the curb in front of his hotel, the Armory and Alehouse. The weather being fine, he decided to take a walk around the block as he worked through the rest of the set-up program. He met with a few rude stares as he tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, to walk and train the implant at the same time, but he realized this was a skill he would have to develop, so he kept at it -- forming images of the basic words as he continued around the block a few times.

  Jeremy's biggest adjustment so far was learning to walk the crowded Society streets without speaking to anyone. You simply didn't pass someone in the Community -- even a stranger -- without some form of greeting. But the Advocate had warned him that the opposite was the case in Society.

  "Large populations develop different rules for social interaction, Jeremy," he had warned. "If you greeted everyone in Society, you'd never get anywhere."

  That was true enough, Jeremy discovered, but it was a difficult mental habit to break, and just one among many. As he thought of that, he realized how intricately learned social custom and personal discomfort bound themselves together. Learning the mores of Society was going to be uncomfortable.

  Manners and customs in the Community and Society had evolved on separate tracks over the course of decades. In order to function in this new culture, he would have to study its rules and adopt them, overcoming his discomfort. And that was going to require emotional distance -- an almost stoic indifference to the notions of propriety he learned in the Community.

  By four o'clock Jeremy was comfortable enough with the implant to send Dr. Berry a message, but finding out how to send it was harder than he had thought. He discovered how to read the contents of his address box only to find it empty. To send a message to Dr. Berry, he had to provide her unique address to the mail routine. He turned to the workstation for help. There were lots of directories of people and businesses on the net, but they were huge, and he didn't know how to use them.

  After 15 minutes of reading the help menu for basic mail service, he found his answer. Dr. Berry had sent him a message while he was at her office, and, fortunately, he hadn't deleted it. He transferred the address from that message into his mail routine's address directory.

  To Doctor Berry from Jeremy Mitchell. I am staying at the Armory and Alehouse Inn. I will meet you in the lobby at seven o'clock.

  The first rule of etiquette for net-messages, the terminal told him, was to keep it short. I hope that wasn't too short, he thought, but was suddenly interrupted by a voice.

  From Doctor Berry. You're doing very well, Jeremy. See you at seven.

  He almost looked around for her before he realized it was his implant speaking. Wow, that was fast, he thought, and began to daydream about the possibilities his implant would open up.

  * * *

  By 5:00, Jeremy had finished the set-up routine for basic audio communications and returned to his hotel room. By 6:45 he forced himself to stop playing with his new toy and take a shower. He was in the lobby, dressed and waiting for Dr. Berry at 6:55. He had almost brought the workstation with him, but since adults in Society had a "workstation" in their left eye, he didn't want to be seen with one -- it would be the rough equivalent of carrying a teddy bear, he reckoned, so he left it behind.

  To pass the time he decided to check the restaurant's menu using his implant. To access the menu he had to address a message with the right syntax to the hotel's restaurant. It would send him an automated voice recording of the day's choices, along with a "printed" list, which required the implant's visual functions to read.

  To Armory and Alehouse pub, get menu, he sent, putting the 'command' accent on 'get.'

  As the recording was just finishing the list of appetizers, Jeremy noticed Dr. Berry entering the lobby.

  "Hi, Jeremy," she said. "Did you get a table?"

  "Oh, no," he apologized. "I didn't think of it."

  "Then let's get one," she said and walked over to a small table near a large, plate-glass window that looked out onto the street. It had just begun to rain, and the pedestrians were adjusting their collars. Jeremy watched, wondering what technological marvel Society had invented to keep your head dry, and wasn't disappointed. He couldn't see any physical barrier, but it was obvious that the rain no longer fell on the people. It simply fell in a different direction, somehow diverted by the device in the collar.

  So what's the big deal about getting wet, he thought, noting another cultural difference between Society and the Community. Society seemed so sterile -- so insulated from the real world.

  As Jeremy watched the unnaturally dry pedestrians walking through the rain, Dr. Berry began to chat about the food at the hotel.

  "Since you seem to know the territory, why don't you order for both of us," he suggested, but she shook her head.

  "No, let me show you how. Have you learned the 'accept' command?"

  "I've calibrated it, but I haven't used it yet," Jeremy said, but he wasn't sure he liked the suggestion. The 'accept' command allowed another person, usually a parent, to use a secure link to issue commands through someone else's implant. It was usually done as a training exercise. When Jeremy had read about it, it scared him. It was bad enough to have all those microfilaments boring holes in his brain, but allowing someone else to send commands through them seemed like too much of an invasion of privacy.

  I don't want her to think she has to mother me, he thought.

  Besides, he liked his privacy. If he
gave Dr. Berry access to his implant, would she be able to read his thoughts?

  He decided to try it once. He could always sever the link.

  "I'm ready. Do I issue the command now?" he asked.

  Dr. Berry raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You're very trusting," she said. "But no, you don't issue a blanket 'accept' command. There are predators out there, you know." Jeremy wondered what that meant, but she continued. "I will send an 'order message' to you, and you will reply with an 'accept' command. It's called an 'order message' because this function is usually used by parents, the police and the military. You can 'accept' it, 'discard' it, 'file' it, and maybe one or two other things I've forgotten."

  Jeremy nodded. "Go ahead," he said, and once again, Dr. Berry raised her eyebrows in surprise at his trust.

  A moment later he heard her familiar voice, mediated by his implant.

  From Doctor Berry. Order, content unspecified.

  Without a second's delay, Jeremy replied.

  Accept.

  Again, her voice echoed in his mind. It was eerie to hear her speaking while her mouth was still.

  I'm touched that you trust me so completely, but you should never accept an unspecified order. I mentioned predators, right? There are unscrupulous people who monitor the net, just waiting for someone to do something like that. They could transfer your money to their account, or send messages in your name. But let's continue.

  Jeremy watched her face as her voice spoke inside his head, and he wondered how far inside she really was. Could she hear his thoughts?

  From Table Twelve, ...

  the message came through as Dr. Berry pointed to the small wooden block in the center of the table with the number 12 printed on it,