But she wasn’t Lucy.
“So,” Matt said, standing to take her proffered hand and shaking it, “you’re Shifu Chu’s star pupil.”
She smiled. “Is that what he said?” she asked in barely accented English.
“Well, it’s what I asked for when I called him. I said, ‘Send me your star. Your best and brightest.’”
The smile deepened, and she sat down at the small, round table and nodded toward the server, who was making his way toward them. “Well, if you’re going to flatter me that way, Dr. Streegman, then I really ought to buy you a latte.”
“Call me Matt, and I’ll have a large cappuccino.” This last part he delivered to the waitress, who’d just arrived at the table.
The girl favored him with a nod, then glanced at the woman with him. “And you, miss?”
“Soy latte, please. Triple shot.”
The waitress headed into the shop to fetch their order, and Matt seated himself, setting his iPad on the table.
“So,” he said, “Chen Lanfen. Which is your surname?”
“Chen. I maintain the traditions of my very proper family, so please call me Lanfen.”
“Of course.”
“Thanks. Master Chu said you have some sort of technology you want me to test?” She spread her hands questioningly. “I can’t even imagine what that might be—or how I’ll be of help.”
“Robotics. Specifically a line of humanoid robots that might be used for security work.”
She shook her head. “Using kung fu?”
“Let me begin at the beginning, and all will be made clear,” Matt told her, opening his iPad and starting up the recruitment slide show he’d created. “I’m the COO of a unique technology company called Forward Kinetics . . .”
CHUCK WAS ONLY VAGUELY AWARE of Matt’s leaving the small ancillary lab. It had become their favorite place to collate data, and they often inhabited it together in companionable silence as they analyzed their various collections of information. Chuck rather enjoyed that. It made him feel as if they were on the same wavelength, though Matt seemed to deal chiefly with financial numbers these days while Chuck pored over EEG charts.
He was surprised to think that he actually missed Matt.
He didn’t dwell on it, though, so focused was he on a new set of charts. The ones he was looking at now were, in a word, baffling. All of the subjects, but especially Sara, had been experiencing more and more frequent spikes of gamma waves. This latest session, in fact, showed not just spikes but several sustained spikes that lasted for roughly thirty seconds each.
Chuck tugged at his lower lip. What did that mean?
Of course biologically it meant she was in several different states at once or juggling states so swiftly it was effectively the same thing. But what did that mean to her mental state?
He knew from postsession interviews how exhausted she and her cohorts were by the end of an experiment. The data he was looking at now, from the session they’d had yesterday, reflected a particularly exhausting set of tests. Sara had commented on it. Mike had also shown a couple of fifteen- and twenty-second gamma peaks and had retreated into an uncharacteristic taciturn state. Tim . . . well, Tim was always aloof and moody. Even with that established, though, at the end of his session yesterday afternoon he had drunk three cans of Pepsi in quick succession rather than the usual two.
Which means . . .
He just didn’t know.
“You look unhappy.”
Chuck glanced up to find Dice standing in the doorway, regarding him quizzically over the rim of his coffee cup.
“Not unhappy. Not at all. Just . . . puzzled. Concerned, maybe.”
“Concerned about what?” Dice wandered farther into the small lab and over to where Chuck pondered what was on his laptop’s broad display.
Chuck gestured at the screen. “That’s Sara’s last session with the CAD/CAM.”
“Uh-huh. What concerns you about it?”
“This here. This long gamma pattern.”
“That’s where the brain is playing a concert, right?”
Chuck smiled. “Good metaphor. Yes.”
“So what was she doing during that time?”
Chuck popped up a second window that showed what had been happening in the CAD program during the prolonged gamma burst. She had been doing detail work apparently, creating and placing landscape elements for the exterior of a building.
Dice glanced back and forth between the EEG and the video of Sara’s architectural project. “I see. She’s doing creative work.”
“She’s always doing creative work.”
“No, I mean she’s designing as opposed to simply placing design elements. She’s designing the garden area.”
Chuck reran the sequence, watching for what Dice meant. He opened a third window that showed what had been happening on the subject’s face as she was experiencing the gamma waves.
“Heh. Sara Cam,” said Dice. “There, see? Watch her eyes. I know that look. That is the look of someone who is concentrating very hard on a pattern problem.”
“A pattern problem,” repeated Chuck.
“She’s thinking about the shape the garden will take. The same way I might think about the shape a robotic arm would need to take in order to fulfill different uses. Make sense?”
Chuck frowned, knowing Dice was onto something, but he still wasn’t sure what.
And then it clicked.
“Yes!”
“Chuck?”
“It makes perfect sense. And it explains the data I was getting from the cellist I had in a while back. She went into gamma when she was beginning to interpret a piece she was still sight reading. What you’re telling me suggests we’re seeing gamma bursts from our subjects when they’re molding original content.”
“Yeah. I guess you could put it that way.”
“How would you put it?”
“I’d say they’re investing themselves in it, I guess.”
That is a good way to put it. Chuck nodded. “Which might explain why Sara has seemed especially tired after a session in which she’s produced a lot of gamma rhythms. But here’s what I’m wondering: These gamma fugues are growing in duration. Are they dangerous? Are they harmful to the subject?”
Dice shrugged. “I have to assume a lot of people experience them. Especially creative people—musicians, writers, painters. Are those people more likely to be, I don’t know, unstable than your average bank teller or factory worker?”
Chuck stared at the engineer, his mind filling up with the data from decades of research into mood disorders. Kay Redfield Jamison had written several volumes about it. One of them came to mind now, a historical retrospective on the link between creativity and mood disorders. Touched with Fire, she’d titled it.
Chuck Brenton briefly contemplated the possibility that the course of experimentation they were pursuing might be pouring gasoline on neurological flames . . . and it worried him.
MATT, ON THE OTHER HAND, couldn’t have been more excited about the direction the company was going in. With his new recruit tentatively on board, Matt moved to the next part of his plan to put Forward Kinetics on the road to real success. He had contacts at MIT who could help him with that—people who could suggest where he and/or Chuck might speak or present to garner attention and backers for their enterprise. A TED conference was a real possibility for Chuck. He could wax poetic about the strides that could be made in medicine. Get an audience to empathize with a quadriplegic who could use the technology to manipulate his or her environment.
Matt, on the other hand, would represent the company to those whose interests were more about commercial applications and ROI and less about warm fuzzies. Both polarities, he knew, could be exploited to take Forward Kinetics from science fiction to science fact—from a small-scale entrepreneurial shop to a large-scale commercial powerhouse.
It’s why he hadn’t dismissed the warm fuzzies out of hand.
The third stage of his plan was
to get Forward Kinetics’ tech out in front of an assemblage of potential backers. With that in mind, he registered the company for a major robotics trade show that was months away.
He did this work from his apartment, leery of being overheard. He guarded his business plans as a writer might guard an unfinished manuscript; there were few things more annoying than having someone peeking over his shoulder. Also, if he was being honest with himself, he knew Chuck would object. Better to ask for forgiveness . . . no, screw that. Better to be right, and let others catch up to him when they finally realize it.
By the time he walked into the afternoon meeting at their corporate HQ, he had set in motion a sequence of events that would crescendo at that April trade show. After the meeting he would contact a design house that specialized in fabricating eye-catching booths for such events. He already had a series of sketches he’d made for a two-story megabooth; it would sit in a corner and incorporate three separate stage areas on the ground floor, with two small conference rooms upstairs . . .
“Hello? Earth to Dr. Streegman.”
Matt looked up from his booth doodles to find Dice staring at him pointedly.
“Sorry?”
“Chuck just asked if you have anything to bring to the table.”
Matt hesitated. He was actually quite full of news, but now, glancing around at the others, he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to share. Well, it can’t hurt to float a trial balloon.
“Actually I’ve spent the morning putting some plans into action. I’ve scheduled several presentations of our technology with regional business organizations, submitted a proposal for a TED Talk, and registered us for the Applied Robotics conference in April.”
Chuck gaped at him. “You did what?”
“Holy mother of pearl,” murmured Eugene. “D’you think we’ll be ready for that?”
“Why not?” Dice challenged him.
“Exactly,” Matt agreed. “Why not? The presentations are easy. The TED Talk, too. We can use video for some of that. Although for the TED conference, if we can present a live demonstration, maybe using Sara or Troll, that would be best. By the time the AR conference rolls around . . . well, we’ll just need to make sure we’re ready. But there’s no reason to think we won’t be.” He shrugged. “Of course all of this may be academic, since acceptance isn’t guaranteed.”
A little white lie—it was true they might not have been accepted. They didn’t need to know that they were already accepted for both because Matt had clout in some quarters and knew how to exercise it. As the group continued to voice their concerns, Matt took up his pen and continued his doodle.
Chapter 8
LIGHTNING
“This gamma burst is almost a minute in length!” Matt stood in the doorway of the main lab, his iPad in one hand and a cup of orange juice in the other.
Chuck, Dice, and Mike were in bay three, setting Mike up for a session with Dice’s new Wi-Fi system. Chuck was adjusting the neural net over the engineer’s head but stopped and looked up, the focused expression on his face clearing like a morning fog.
“That the data from Mike’s last session?” Chuck asked. “Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Thank you, Mr. Spock. Yes, it is interesting. It’s more than interesting. But what does it mean?”
“You know what it means. It means they’re—”
“Yeah, yeah. They’re double- and triple-tasking. I get that. But the bursts are growing longer. Hell, they’re not even bursts anymore, Chuck. They’re full-blown states.”
“Yes. They are,” Mike said, awe mixing with pride.
Chuck made a final adjustment and turned to face his partner, jamming his hands deep into the pockets of the white lab coat he insisted on wearing. “I think what we’re seeing is like muscle memory. I think their brains are becoming more effective and efficient at working this way.”
Matt stared at him, aware suddenly of the beating of his own heart. “You mean they’re building mental muscles?”
“That’s what I’m thinking, yes. It’s like any other skill. Take skiing or playing tennis, for example. You may be awkward and slow when you start out, you may tire easily, but if you keep doing what you’re doing, you get better. You develop the muscles appropriate to the activity, and you learn how to use them most effectively.”
“So what we’re seeing here is . . . evolution on a micro scale.”
Chuck flashed a winsome smile. “Yes! Exciting, isn’t it? I mean we know that the human brain is plastic, adaptable. But just how adaptable, we’re only now discovering.”
Matt came farther into the lab, looking at Mike a little differently now. “To be clear, what we’re doing here is creating an evolutionary imperative.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it an imperative. More like an evolutionary opportunity.”
“An evolutionary opportunity. Can I quote you on that, Doc?”
“Sure. Why not? But if anyone laughs, tell them it was Dice’s idea.”
Dice snorted and stood up from where he’d been tinkering with Roboticus’s Wi-Fi transceiver. “We’re ready to give it a try. You all set, Mike?”
“Yeah. Can’t you see me flexing my brain muscles?”
Dice smiled and glanced at Matt. “You got a moment to watch the maiden voyage of the Wi-Fi interface?”
“Sorry, no. I have to go write a speech.”
“AND THAT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, is perhaps the most exciting thing about our research: the subjects we are working with on a frequent basis are rewriting their own internal software. They are, in essence, taking advantage of an evolutionary opportunity afforded them by the Brenton-Kobayashi Kinetic Interface. And as they do, we’ve discovered one other thing: the possibilities are endless.”
Matt wrapped up his talk to thunderous applause, after which he did some Q and A. Mostly the questions were about real-world applications, which he was more than happy to provide. Here Matt was careful to speak his audience’s language. He was courting a mixed group of politicians and businessmen, with a handful of medical professionals who worked for a medical equipment manufacturer thrown in. That audience required a broad-based approach that made use of some of Chuck’s favorite words: transcend, surmount, and quality of life.
“Imagine,” Matt told one manufacturer of printed circuitry, “that you have an employee—a highly skilled, well-trained employee—whose job is to design PC boards. That employee suffers a broken finger. Your normal course of action in that case might be to put the employee on disability, right?”
The man nodded.
Matt walked to the whiteboard that was set up behind him in the hotel ballroom and wrote “short-term disability.”
“Okay, and you’d have to put someone else in the position, meaning you’d have to hire and train another CAD/CAM operator, yes?”
“Yes.”
Matt wrote “hire and train” on the board.
“And while that person is coming up to speed, is he or she going to be as productive as the original designer?”
“Hell no.”
Matt wrote “lost productivity” beneath the other notations.
“What about the quality of their work? Is that going to be up to par?”
“No.”
Now others were shaking their heads.
Matt turned back to the board and wrote “increased quality-assurance hours.”
“So all in all, you’re looking at a pretty costly situation. What does it cost to hire and train these days?”
“Pretty close to ten grand for that level of employee,” said the manufacturer.
“Ten grand,” Matt repeated. “Per employee.” He capped the marker. “Now let’s imagine that the same injury befalls someone trained to work with the CAD/CAM machine through Becky. That employee could return to work almost immediately. Heck, they could even lie down on the job if they needed to. As long as they could see their workspace using our patented kinetic converter, they could continue to output designs or finished product. No need
to hire and train anybody to take their place. No need for them to avail themselves of disability insurance, thus cutting their paycheck. No need for their quality to fall off, thus creating more work for your QA teams and more rework for them or another employee.”
“I’d like to see this in action,” said one older gentleman with a ramrod-straight bearing that spoke of the military.
“Absolutely. We’ll be demonstrating our technology at the Applied Robotics show coming up this spring. If you aren’t going to be there, or if you would like a preview, let me know, and I’ll arrange a visit to the lab.”
As it turned out, he did end up scheduling a walk-through for the older guy, who was, he learned, an ex-marine by the name of Leighton Howard. He did it on a day when Chuck was off doing a gig of his own, and Eugene and Dice were running the lab.
And he did it close to quitting time, too, so that after Howard was impressed by Sara and Mike, he could be equally dazzled by Chen Lanfen.
FOR CHEN LANFEN, KUNG FU was more than a workout routine, more than a means of self-defense, even more than a martial art form. It was a whole body and spirit meditation, for she understood the words kung fu as much in their original meaning of “work” or “accomplishment” as she did their later application, which referred to a particular set of martial arts. When she’d first undertaken learning kung fu, she had also sought to master the highly ritualized Fujian tea ceremony, kung fu cha. She used the principles of kung fu in Chinese calligraphy, in cooking, in music. She wrote the odd line of poetry, too, but did not feel she rose to the level of kung fu there. Hard work, maybe, but not much achievement.
Her initial work with the device Matt called Becky had been awkward. Martial arts required a free flow of energies through the body and a free flow of the body through space. That had not been possible wearing a crown of transceivers and twinkly lights, and she had immediately gotten out of the meditative state required for her discipline and into a stormy mental funk.
Then Matt’s assistant, Dice, had presented her with a Wi-Fi alternative to the fiber-optic cable and linked her to the funny robot that had become an extension of her will.
The God Wave Page 6