Chuck nodded at the big screen. “So are the ones where we overlap automatic ins?”
Matt shook his head. “No.”
No?
But before Chuck could protest, Matt said, “I think we should discuss the pros and cons of each selection. Let’s go for the low-hanging fruit first, though. Take law enforcement or private security. Great market there. Just think of the applications: disarming bombs, using bots to secure—well, whatever needs securing. Physical safety of the remote operator would be a big plus.”
“You can already do that with mechanical drones,” Chuck argued.
“Not like this, Doctor,” said Dice. “It would be as if the guard were there. Combine the kinetics with VR—that’d be an unbeatable combination.”
“Not to mention that removing the safety of the officer out of the equation, you can eliminate a lot of fatal error in the heat of the moment,” Eugene mused, “and I can see it having a strong social impact.”
“That law enforcement and private security firms would be willing to pay a significant amount for,” concluded Matt. “I think we definitely need to consider security applications relatively soon.”
“That’ll take some more doing in the robotics department,” Dice admitted. “But, yeah, I’d prioritize it.”
“Good. That will also give us some ancillary technologies to go with the primary offering. Security robotics.”
“Do I hear a yea on security?” asked Tana, looking askance at the four men.
Matt glanced fleetingly at the others and then made a thumbs-up gesture.
I guess so, Chuck thought. But it is a good use of the tech.
Tana typed and highlighted the words “security, law enforcement applications.”
“Great,” Matt said. “Now how about computer-aided design? Benefits are obvious, and we’ve already got someone in the program.”
“We’ve got two people in the program, actually,” said Chuck. “Sara and Mini.”
Matt was silent for a moment, his expression opaque. “Mini doesn’t do CAD. She does art.”
“With a computer.”
“Different application, Chuck. There are industrial applications for what Sara does. There’s a market for it. Can you really claim that what Mini does, as creative as it might be, is marketable?”
Chuck felt his throat tighten up. He swallowed. “Matt, Mini’s been with the program from pretty early on. She has a bright, experimental nature.”
“She’s helped us hone our approach a lot,” Eugene added.
Matt skewered them both with his too-direct gaze. “We need to prove to potential investors that what we’re working on can have real-world benefits.”
“Real world?” Chuck laughed, pointing at the screen. “Video games?”
“Not only is video gaming a huge market,” Matt said calmly—infuriatingly so, if Chuck was being honest about it—“but it provides a great prototype process to show that neurokinetics will allow programmers to code and test that code much more efficiently and effectively. And again, we’ve already got a programmer in the existing plan who happens to be an artist as well. Troll creates his own creatures, after all, and programs their movements. I’d say he’s ideal—as is his discipline—to give us the sort of model that would interest investors and potential customers.”
Chuck exhaled noisily. “Fine. Okay. I see that. But what about applications for people with mobility issues?”
“I don’t think we need to test using handicapped people at this juncture,” said Matt, glancing at Chuck. “Whatever Troll can do in the realm of programming or Sara can do with a CAD/CAM machine, a handicapped programmer or designer could do just as well.” He swung his chair toward Chuck, his eyes bright. “Think of it. Our neural interface could allow a handicapped engineer to run a CAD/CAM program and let construction workers safely run dangerous equipment or perform dangerous procedures from a distance. Just think of the benefits to rescue operations or firefighting.”
“I am thinking of those things.”
“Have you thought about how hard they’d be to test, though? Are we going to burn down some buildings to show that a fire truck can put out a blaze without a squadron of firefighters putting their lives on the line? Have you considered how expensive it would be to even attempt to explore that before we’ve proven the efficacy of the tech for other, smaller disciplines?”
He had a point. “Fine, but computer games?”
Matt leaned toward his partner, his elbows on the table, his face earnest. “Chuck, today computer games, tomorrow medical programs that allow doctors to do delicate manipulations inside the human body without having to use tools that are too large for the job. We need to demonstrate the efficacy of the process in a way that makes the point but without endangering any lives. Say we did test a medical application right out of the box. Who’d sign up for that study?”
“Nobody.”
“Exactly. Now, let’s get back to work here. We have security, CAD/CAM, and video game creation and testing. What’s next?”
What was next was construction. Chuck started to argue against it, but Matt convinced him this was the ideal way to find out if their tech could allow a seasoned construction worker to manipulate large machinery. Surely they could afford one little backhoe.
The final list was tightly focused: CAD/CAM, programming, video game play, construction, and security. Matt’s argument—from which he could not be turned—was that those were gateway applications for all others.
Chuck could not help but note that they were also the most commercial—and were Matt’s original list.
CHUCK HAD EXPECTED IT WOULD be hard to tell Mini Mause she wasn’t needed for the program anymore. He hadn’t expected it would be harder on him than it was on her and that she would end up consoling him for letting her go.
“Hey, it’s okay, Doc,” she told him, one small, capable hand on his shoulder.
They sat face-to-face in a couple of side chairs in his large, bright office on the lower level of the building. He had been unable to sit across a desk from her like a college professor flunking a student . . . or a boss firing an employee.
“Really. I think I got a little too caught up in it all anyway, you know? I wasn’t getting as much artwork done as I was daydreaming about what I would do the next time I was in the lab.” She laughed—a light, breezy sound that made Chuck at least want to feel better. “Who knows? Maybe I could come in on a volunteer basis. You know, sort of a proof of concept after you’ve tried the gear out on the other guys.”
Chuck studied her pert face carefully. “You’d do that? Just on your own time?”
“Sure, why not? I love using this lab as an art studio. Where else would I get access to this kind of equipment? Not to mention a fully stocked kitchen? Besides, this is cool stuff, Doc. This is like, you know . . . what the future is made of.”
He sat back in his chair and regarded her with narrowed eyes. “I suppose the fact that you’re sweet on my lab director doesn’t enter into it.”
Her cheeks went pink.
“Heck, no. I don’t have to be here every day to get to Eugene.” She flashed him a blinding smile and popped out of her chair. “Now, I’m going to go over to the lab and see what he thinks of my being let go. Wanna watch?”
He followed Mini as far as the door to the lab where Eugene was slaving over a computer model for the CAD/CAM interface. She went directly to his workstation and stood silently for a moment, then moved just enough to make the fabric of her long skirt rustle.
Eugene glanced up at her, his eyes focusing on something outside his head faster than Chuck had ever seen.
“Mini. Hi. I didn’t know you were here.”
“I’m just here to say good-bye, Euge. Doc Brenton just told me he won’t be needing me anymore for the program, so . . .” She shrugged artlessly. “I guess I won’t see you.”
Euge’s eyes were locked on hers with a stunned expression. He’d known, of course, that her part of the program wa
s going to be terminated but, in true Eugene Pozniaki fashion, had apparently not considered the ramifications of that.
He glanced from Mini to the clock on the wall above his lightboard. Almost one. “Look, I’m at a stopping point here. Can you . . . that is, can we go get some lunch?”
She nodded, smiling. With her hands laced together in front of her, her head tilted to one side, and her short hair haloing a heart-shaped face, she managed to look pleasantly surprised by the whole exchange she had just orchestrated. Chuck almost felt sorry for Eugene. Almost.
Grinning, he turned and went back to his office. Minerva Mause might be small, but she was clearly a force to be reckoned with.
Chapter 5
LAB RATS
Matt loved to win. He had definitely won the battle to steer the neurokinetics program toward the commercially viable side. He could only shake his head at Chuck’s wish list of disciplines for initial experimentation. Leave it to the academic to come up with impractical, feel-good choices. Of course looking at medical and mobility applications would make sense at some point, but medicine was a low-margin operation given that only well-funded teaching hospitals such as Johns Hopkins had the wherewithal to make substantial financial commitments. People covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act were underwritten by public funds that were at the mercy of the ballot box, which shivered every time the political winds changed. Besides which, the Food and Drug Administration was notorious in delaying approval, and delays were the last thing they needed.
Matt had his eyes on a cadre of investors that would be able to provide almost limitless funding and would enable Forward Kinetics to produce commercially viable applications for Chuck and Dice’s co-invention, the Brenton-Kobayashi Kinetic Interface, or BKKI.
The Brenton component was a highly modified Brewster Brain Pattern Monitor—so modified, in fact, that Matt was already pursuing a patent on the unit. The CPU ran a program based on his conversion algorithm. Dice’s input, in addition to continual work on the miniaturization of the monitor, was a lightweight transceiver system that linked the monitor to the mechanism it was intended to drive.
It was all coming together.
And now, after months of preparation, they were ready to begin working with their first round of subjects.
They were in the lab, getting ready for some field testing with the devices Dice and his select team of self-described minions had modified to take input from the BKKI, or Becky, as they insisted on calling it. In addition to Sara Crowell and Tim Desmond, there was a raw recruit named Mikhail Yenotov.
They were a study in diversity, Matt reflected as he watched them through the high window of the gallery, which gave their main lab the appearance of a huge operating theater. Sara was a tall, cool brunette in her thirties. No nonsense. Remote. Watchful, with high-intensity gray eyes. Matt understood that she used her privacy like a shield. Understand? Hell, I practically invented that. Like him, something in her past had hurt her, had gotten in somehow. Probably a relationship. Possibly a woman—Matt couldn’t see her getting worked up over something as stupid as a man.
While Sara kept her private life to herself, the same could not be said for her opinions. Those she spread liberally, almost joyfully, like in those old experiments in which DDT was sprayed over swimming pools full of smiling children. A lot of those opinions were reserved for the male-dominated industry in which she worked. She had bumped up against the glass ceiling so many times it had given her a thicker skull, and she refused to even entertain ideas that she might not be as good as the boys, which she’d been hearing all her life, starting with her father. It was this constant battle that made her hard. But it also made her better.
Tim—or Troll, as he preferred to be called—was in his twenties. The guy was such an archetypal computer-gaming nerd that he made Dice and Eugene both look like high school jocks. He had that pale, damp mushroom complexion one associated with dimly lit computer grottos and game arcades. It went with his riot of thick, unevenly cut hair. His watery, colorless eyes reminded Matt of photos he’d seen in Nat Geo of bush babies or whatever those little big-eyed buggers were called. Troll spoke in monosyllables except when describing his latest creations or nattering about computer code with Dice or Eugene—or insulting someone. Even then most of what came out of his mouth was incomprehensible to half the listeners half the time.
And then there was Mike Yenotov. A meat-and-potatoes construction engineer in his early forties, he was straight up, straightforward, blunt, and quietly, mulishly stubborn. What he didn’t understand he filed away with a blink of his brown eyes and a shrug that Matt took to mean, “I don’t get it. I don’t need to get it. If I need to get it, someone will just have to stop and explain it to me . . . and if they condescend to me, I’ll leave—after punching them in the mouth.” Mike was practical and knowledgeable about his craft—what he didn’t know about heavy machinery could probably fit on the head of a very small pin—but seemingly little else.
Then there was Minerva. If Chuck thought he was being clever about sneaking her around like a pet mouse in his pocket to hide her continued involvement from his business partner, he was fooling himself. Matt knew Mini was still coming in after hours (if there really was such a thing in a place like this) and working with the interface. He let it happen as a way of throwing Chuck a bone after blackballing most of his list of applications. What made Chuck happy made Matt’s life easier. He also wasn’t sure how effectively a no would work on Mini. One, could he bring himself to say it to her face? Two, would she understand what no meant anyway? Naturally she would not get as much time on the equipment as the three official subjects, not by a long shot. But if it was enough time to make Chuck content, that would be all that was necessary.
In the event that Chuck demanded she have greater access (requested, rather, because it was hard to imagine Chuck Brenton demanding anything), Matt was prepared to offer her an official place in the program, but he had no intention of doing that voluntarily . . . and only as a last resort. Time with Becky was at a premium—they had only the one unit until Dice’s team could assemble another—and Matt was determined not to waste any time on what he viewed as a frivolous pursuit.
Seeing Chuck enter the lab through the main doors below, Matt left the observation gallery and hurried down the stairs.
Leaving Chuck to steer the sessions alone was a bad idea.
THERE’S AN OLD APHORISM ABOUT being happy as a clam. Chuck had no idea what clams had to be happy about, only that they lacked the neural mechanisms to be unhappy about anything. Nonetheless, he was, he decided, happy as that proverbial clam when he rolled into the lab on the first morning of official experimentation with the new Brenton-Kobayashi Kinetic Interface.
Because up until today, the subjects had been working with Dice’s Roboticus, learning to steer it smoothly about the lab. And while that was exciting to see, now they’d begin working within their own disciplines.
One step closer.
There were two arenas of experimentation set up in different sections of the large laboratory. One involved a powerful computer system that was outfitted with both Sara’s CAD software and Tim’s programming package; the other required a scale model of a backhoe that had been placed in a ten-by-ten-foot container, three feet deep in sand.
Despite his being the rookie, the experiments started with Mike Yenotov, figuring that his discipline was closest in nature to driving Roboticus, which he had proved apt at. Sara was slated for the next day and Tim for the day after that.
Mike’s first session went about as well as hoped. The kinetic converter functioned flawlessly, capturing his brain waves as he envisioned himself controlling the model backhoe and translating them into energy and force that Becky could use to manipulate the machine’s modified mechanisms.
The backhoe was joystick operated, just like Roboticus, and after about a half hour of getting used to the model’s controls, Mike was almost making it dance as it dug a hole in the lab’s sandb
ox.
“I gotta tell you,” he said, his voice betraying just a hint of New Jersey, “this is bonehead simple. I’m thinking one guy could operate a team of hoes and watch what each one is doing from the most useful POV. Viewpoint, I mean,” he added. “Think of it: if I don’t gotta be in the cab, I don’t need a spotter tellin’ me about depth and dimensions. I can be checkin’ that stuff myself.”
Chuck did think of it, and the prospect excited him. It hadn’t occurred to him until just that moment that the most useful POV, as Mike had put it, wasn’t always the first-person one. Dice, meanwhile, was almost dancing at the prospect of combining the Forward Kinetics system with the VR piece—a virtual reality component he intended to meld with the neural net.
“Just think of the possibilities,” he enthused at the end of the day as they assessed their work with Mike. “The construction guy or the firefighter or the security guard now has a choice—look at the environment from inside the remote mechanism or look at it from the external viewpoint. All at the speed of thought.”
Chuck was thinking of the possibilities, even as he looked ahead to pairing Sara Crowell with her CAD software for the first time. Because although he was optimistic based on Mike’s performance, he couldn’t help but be cautious, too. There were bound to be differences between operating a purely mechanical device—even one with onboard computer assist, like Mike did—and operating software. One was solid, logical; it was obvious how the parts all moved and fit together. The other was ethereal, abstract. It relied on code to call it into existence. Chuck expected it would be a challenge to operate the intangible.
He’d said as much aloud when he, Dice, and Matt were alone in the conference room at the end of the debriefing session. Matt looked at him in a way that made Chuck feel as if he’d somehow turned plain old English into something untranslatable. “I don’t foresee any problems, Chuck. You’re such a damn worrywart. Clearly if they’ve driven the robot, they can run other machinery.” He got up, took a last drink of soda, tossed the can into the recycle bin, and left the room.
The God Wave Page 4