Magic, Machines and the Awakening of Danny Searle

by John McWilliams

  “We see what we see because our subconscious tells us what we are recognizing. We believe what we see is what it is because of how that recognition feels. And consider all the information contained within this sense of recognition—is the object close or far? is it hard or soft? is it a threat or friendly? and on and on—and all known to us in an instant of recognition.

  “Who needs to calculate how far away this spoon is from them? Anyone wondering if it’s a threat?

  “But this awesome ability to see is also our blindness. And that blindness is what makes magic possible.” He looked at Danny. She pushed back her chair and joined him at the head of the table.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my assistant, Ms. Danny Searle.”

  Danny curtsied as we applauded. Her eyes were so expressive and distracting—it was no wonder she was so good at this prestidigitation stuff. She did a flourish of her hands and her black scarf appeared.

  “Yikes,” my mother blurted. “Your assistant just showed you up in two seconds flat.”

  “She always does that. But sit tight—you haven’t seen the best part of my act yet.”

  Danny handed my father the scarf.

  “Danny, do you remember the day you came in for your interview and you brought that wizard’s satchel with you? You had things in it like pens, pencils and marbles because, as you told us, the more common the object, the more magically powerful it is.”

  “I do.”

  “And why are common objects more magically powerful than uncommon objects?”

  “Because the more common they are, the more reinforced people’s beliefs are in them.”

  “In other words,” my father said, “the more common the object, the quicker a person will recognize that object and feel they know all there is to know about it—which is why a magician is better off making a softball appear, rather than some generic yellow ball. With the yellow ball, the audience is left wondering what that ball might be made of. With the softball they just know. All the information is contained within their recognition. And, instantly, they comprehend the significance of the softball appearing out of nowhere and are left simply wondering: How is that possible?

  “Which, by the way, is exactly what you will all be wondering in just one moment.” My father held the scarf up by its corners in front of him. “I really hope this works.” He inhaled deeply. “Abracadabra.” He whisked the scarf away, and there in front of him, resting on the table, was a bowling ball.

  We clapped as he picked the ball up and let it thump down hard against the table.

  “This is impressive because you all instantly recognized this object. You know that it’s heavy, very solid, and probably wasn’t hidden up my sleeve.”

  “Unfortunately, though, I don’t think you’re going to like this next part.” He turned to Danny. “The potatoes, please.”

  “Potatoes?” My mother looked at the twins and shrugged. They shrugged back.

  Danny returned from the kitchen a moment later with a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and placed it on the table next to the bowling ball.

  “Now, let’s try a little experiment,” my father said. “You see, our subconscious minds tell us what we believe about things…” He lifted the bowling ball over the potatoes. “But what about events?” He hesitated, looking at us. “I’m pretty sure potatoes don’t stain.”

  Mohamed and Jamila pushed back from the table.

  My mother instinctively grabbed the twins.

  I cringed as he dropped the ball.

  It fell…

  But nothing happened. It simply landed on top of the mound and sat there.

  “Well, this is strange.” My father rubbed his chin. “Are these super-dense potatoes, or did this bowling ball somehow forget to do its job?” He picked up the ball and threw it to me.

  I flinched, though almost instantly, I sensed by the way it flew through the air that it was actually quite light, and caught it.

  “Thanks.” I wiped potato off my cheek. I tossed the ball up and down a couple of times. My guess was hard plastic over Styrofoam—kind of like a big M&M.

  “A fake ball?” my mother asked.

  “Not a fake ball,” my father said. “I can assure you it’s quite real. It just doesn’t have the physical qualities your subconscious assigned to it. As a great magician, I—” He allowed for a moment of chuckles. “I simply took advantage of the power of common objects. That’s what all magicians do; they take advantage of what we believe about the world.”

  Danny shook her head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing…”

  He looked at her.

  “You were supposed to say, ‘Magicians demonstrate that reality is tied directly to our beliefs.’ And that, ‘Magic acts should make us appreciate the fact that every one of our perceptions is an example of nature’s own magic act.’”

  “I thought that was a little over the top.”

  “No, it’s not. And you’re not supposed to change our act right in the middle.”

  “I was improvising.”

  “Well, you make it sound as if our beliefs are just inconsequential assumptions about the world.”

  “And you make it sound as if the world is merely made of pixie dust.”

  My mother cleared her throat. “I don’t know much about magic acts, but I’m pretty certain you’re not supposed to get into an argument with your assistant. Also, I think you’ve reached the limit of the girls’ attention spans.”

  “Well, that about wraps up our magic act for the evening, anyway.” My father looked at the girls. “You two can go chase the kittens around if you want.”

  Without hesitation, Tara and Jasmine ran off to the library.

  My father and Danny sat down.

  “I have a question,” David said. “It goes back to what you said originally about recognition. You said that our thoughts are like a melting pot of sensations and that this is how we see. But who exactly is doing the seeing? Who is feeling the sensations? At the bottom of it all, mustn’t there be some kind of soul, or being… or something?”

  “What’s at the bottom of a school of fish?” my father asked. “A fish? Two fish? Three? There are, in fact, no fish at the bottom. A school of fish is a pattern, a formation, an operation that emerges out of the behavior of fish. And consciousness is like that. We, as conscious beings, emerge out of a school of sensations—our beliefs. And those sensations emerge out of the electrochemical behavior going on inside our heads. But, before we go and give too much credit to what we perceive as chemical interactions, bear in mind that, as with all machine operation, we can’t perceive these things in their true depth.”

  “But why does consciousness have to emerge at all?” David asked. “Why can’t emergence simply yield unconscious creatures that merely behave as we behave?”

  “Zombies,” my father muttered. “Well, the idea of a zombie presumes that a zombie would be more efficient—as if consciousness were merely a wasteful light bulb burning away in the attic.

  “But nature is a bit greener than that.” He smiled. “Look, what happens when we roll a rock down the side of a mountain? Does it avalanche? Maybe, maybe not. But how does the mountain know what to do?

  “That may sound like a silly question, but if the mountain were like a zombie—a linear thinker—it would have to calculate millions, if not billions, of variables to get the answer. But mountains get their answers instantly. They do because the mountain itself is the solution. And that’s how the brain works. Toss new sensory data at it and, bam, the current brain state—a complex layering of emergent patterns formed of electrochemicals—is the solution.”

  “Okay—and I realize our brains are much more complex than mountains—but still, why can’t our brains emerge without awareness?”

  “Why can’t the air molecules within a hurricane push against each other without creating wind?”

  “But isn’t wind just our perception of those molecules?”

  “Wind is our percepti
on of what emerges out of the behavior of those molecules. There are no wind molecules per se. You can’t just scoop up some wind and bring it back to your laboratory to study. So: you tell me how to take the wind out of a hurricane, and I’ll tell you how to take awareness out of our brains.”

  12

  Two months later, in early May, my father, Mohamed and I flew out to Minnesota to meet with Nano Memory Corporation’s technical staff. I wasn’t certain why my father kept dragging me along to his meetings, but I was way past wasting my time complaining.

  David had met us at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport and from there we had driven two hours south through corn country to Nano Memory’s glass and chrome facility. Out in the middle of nowhere, their building looked like a colossal spaceship half sunk into a grassy knoll.

  “Next time I’m on the island,” David said to me as we entered the brushed-steel lobby, “how about we do a little suit shopping?”

  “At least he won’t be mistaken for a lawyer,” Mohamed quipped, his open-collar cornflower shirt and khaki pants not much more professional-looking than my black casual attire.

  “Actually, a lawyer might have come in handy today,” my father joked.

  We made our way across the marble floor to the reception desk and the gold placard that read: Welcome Dr. Cipriani and the Quantum Bay Laboratory Team.

  Before my father could even introduce himself, the receptionist stood and smiled. “Welcome, Dr. Cipriani. I’ve informed Doctors Caldwell, Jeffers and Reinbeck that you and your associates have arrived. They’re on their way.” She then asked him for his autograph.

  A minute after that, six ID-badge-wearing Nano Memory employees accosted my father with a barrage of questions. David, Mohamed and I moved aside.

  “This has got to be a little strange for you,” I said to David.

  “You mean your father being the star of the show? Not really. Actually, it’s kind of nice to be on the outside for once.”

  When Doctors Caldwell, Jeffers and Reinbeck arrived, they shooed the Dr. Cipriani fan club away and led us to the elevators.

  “Watch your step,” Dr. Jeffers said when we arrived an inch short of our third floor destination.

  “This building has a modern façade,” Hans Reinbeck said in a thick German accent, “but in the early fifties, from what I’ve been told, it served as a research facility for the U.S. Department of Defense.”

  “Researching what? Dare I ask?” my father said.

  “Some say this is where they took those Roswell bodies.” Hans looked at my father, eyebrows raised.

  “He’s kidding, of course.” Dr. Caldwell glared at Hans.

  “Think what you want.” Hans shrugged. “But it’s only a matter of time before they return. And then it’s—”

  “Einen schönen Tag allerseits!” my father interjected. He and Hans laughed. They spoke a moment in German and again howled with laughter. My father apologized, explaining that it wouldn’t translate well.

  We entered a conference room that had an elliptical cherry-wood table and twenty-four leather chairs.

  “Help yourselves, gentlemen,” Dr. Caldwell said, indicating the coffee and donuts set out on a side table. “Around ten others will be joining us from Dr. Jeffers’s group, and Dr. Landenberg will be here shortly.”

  When Dr. Jeffers’s group arrived, my father and Mohamed were quickly drawn into a conversation about the Warwick Chip’s communication protocol. David and I drifted over to the conference table and sat down.

  “At least this is your crowd,” David said.

  “My crowd? This is all about manufacturing.” I sipped my coffee. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

  “I think your father wants you to present an overview of Prometheus.”

  I nearly spilled my coffee, setting it down.

  “I take it this is something you’d rather not do?”

  I frowned.

  “Just a few words. Nothing major.”

  “He knows I hate public speaking.” I glanced over at my father, working the room with his usual high-energy charm.

  “Just think of it this way,” David said. “You wouldn’t be nervous talking to any one of these people individually, would you? Well, that’s all you’re really doing. Just all at once.”

  “Thanks, I feel much better now.”

  Dr. Landenberg arrived and he and my father spoke privately up at the front of the room, carrying on like old war buddies. Dr. Landenberg’s arrival also seemed to be the cue for everyone to sit down. Mohamed joined David and me at the table.

  My father brought Dr. Landenberg over and introduced him to us, starting with Mohamed.

  “Ah, Dr. Mohamed Ayman El-Rahman, Dr. Jeffers and his team have nothing but the highest praise for you, sir. A pleasure.” He shook Mohamed’s hand and moved on to David. “Mr. David Levinson, what a delight to meet you, sir. I must confess, I Googled you last night. Your shows are absolutely magnificent.”

  My father turned Dr. Landenberg toward me and the old man took my hand in both of his.

  I tensed at this effusive greeting.

  “I’d give anything to be in your shoes,” he said. “So much talent, and right at the beginning of it all.”

  Dr. Landenberg had Peter’s same drawn, freckled face, only with an additional forty to fifty years of liver spots and wrinkles.

  “Oh come on, Nate,” my father said, “you have a few good years left in you.”

  “A few, a few.” Dr. Landenberg patted me on the shoulder and ambled toward the head of the table. He cleared his throat and all conversation stopped. “Dr. Cipriani, Dr. El-Rahman, Mr. Levinson and Mr. Tyler Cipriani, Nano Memory welcomes you.”

  After Dr. Landenberg introduced the fourteen NMC team members present, he opened a cabinet-encased whiteboard at the front of the room and began a lecture on Nano Memory’s manufacturing processes. Dr. Jeffers then took the floor and expanded on the company’s current yield problems. My father followed that up with an overview of Prometheus’s NMC-N5 nano-node deployment requirements.

  Using a green marker, he sketched out how Prometheus’s nano-node network would work. Each microscopic node would contain an onboard microprocessor and two inductive coils for communication and forming actual physical bonds; spherical hubs would be used to establish complex branches. By the time he finished, I couldn’t help but notice how much his network depiction looked like the bars and balls of a child’s magnetic building set.

  My father then drew a time line of events, from that moment until the A.I. XPRIZE presentation in March. Using a red marker, he indicated our most critical milestones. In conclusion, he suggested that a fresh pair of eyes be brought in to look at the yield problem, and presented Dr. Landenberg with the resumés of two respected material scientists. This led to a heated debate.

  After what seemed like hours, Dr. Landenberg finally gave in, agreeing to bring in one of the consultants. He gave my father a knowing look, and though I’ll probably never know what kind of agreement these two had had, my father turned to me and asked if I wouldn’t mind presenting an overview of Prometheus’s programming. “I think it would be a nice gesture,” he said.

  “A nice gesture?” I replied quietly. “I don’t have anything prepared.”

  “Two minutes. Just a quick summary of what you’ve been doing.”

  “Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for Mohamed to talk about the Warwick Chip?”

  Mohamed turned, hearing his name. I waved him off.

  “Believe it or not, they’d rather hear about your programming.”

  “What if I tell them something you don’t want them to know?”

  “It’s not like we have a secret formula.”

  “Gentlemen?” Dr. Landenberg said. “Are we ready to proceed?”

  “Just one moment, Nate—”

  “We’re ready,” David said.

  My father and I turned.

  “Gentlemen…” David looked around the table, taking a mom
ent to smile at the four women present. “…and ladies. I’ve only just recently joined the Quantum Bay team. I’m no scientist, nor am I an engineer, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of technical smarts to appreciate just how important your work is. This is cutting-edge stuff, and when you consider where it’s all leading—artificial brain matter! Well, that’s pretty scary.”

  David’s dramatic voice had them mesmerized. Honestly, I think he could have been saying anything. Every ear was perked, every eye was on him.

  “But there’s something even scarier out there.” David glanced at me. “I know you all understand Tyler Cipriani’s talents far better than I, but there is one thing you might not know: he’s actually a pretty decent guy. And I’m almost certain he’s not one of Dr. Cipriani’s robots.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Anyway, we’ve asked him to present an overview of the Prometheus program. Unfortunately—or maybe I should say unfairly—we threw this at him at the last second. So, we were hoping that maybe you, Dr. Jeffers, could start things off with a few questions?”

  “I’d be delighted,” Dr. Jeffers said.

  My father leaned forward and nodded approvingly at David.

  “Thanks,” I muttered in David’s direction. I didn’t really appreciate his robot joke, but answering a few questions was something I could handle.

  Dr. Jeffers started me off with some general questions, and soon, as I felt more confident, I began to elaborate in detail. Eventually, I even went on to explain some of the methods I was using for dealing with four-tier emergent structures, and expounding on my planned N5 instantiation process and my strategies for incorporating mechanical and chemical variables into my design.

  I wasn’t sure how well I had conveyed my ideas, but I did feel pretty good about myself. All those eyes on me had brought to mind a kind of collective monster. And I had slayed that beast. Or, at least, appeased it. Good enough.