Remember

by Karthikeyan, Girish

  That ends the protests. The governing group has something to think about. Are they determined to stand their ground or are they accepting the opinion of the protesters as their own?

  I hand back the pad. "I still don't think a smaller paper can do a good job covering the news."

  She holds the pad inside her arms folded across her chest. "Whatever serious news in Omnipresent is just as watered down as your espresso."

  That statement feels a little too neat. The newspaper discussion continued the one about coffee. She almost knew. "Let’s agree to disagree." We shake hands. It feels awkward and results with mutual discontent.

  "Fine with me."

  I leave, as usual. Why can't I just let it go? Why? We are just doing it to argue. There doesn't seem to be a good reason. The relative privacy of my desk provokes reading of Dr. Mekova's study. She never mentioned it before.

  (—)

  Cumulative Methodology to Recover Lost Memories in Traumatic Brain Injury

  By: Dr. Irena Mekova, PhD. MD., Dr. Ikeyama Kimura, MD., and Dr. Lukas Monrovia, MD.

  Abstract

  Despite advances in safety and medicine, traumatic brain injury (TBI) continues as a serious problem. TBI accounts for 50% of all brain related medical issues. Memory loss leads the complications attributed to TBI. Up until this point, the therapies utilized originate from other industries: entertainment, law enforcement, and news publishing. The success of these therapies varies on a case to case basis. A new methodology provides a comprehensive treatment for all memory loss issues. It is explored in this cross-over study.

  (—)

  I suddenly feel everyone staring at me. Looking up shows, I'm just imaging it. Paranoia shakes away the privacy here. Reading stops and work starts. How to make sure the Agent doesn’t take the study. I want to read and save it. The reasoning eludes me. Any tech I have, they can wipe clean. Anyway, I have a class to get ready for.

  Hard Sell

  Tues 7/11/17 12:49 Noon

  I get something to eat, after nearly finishing the class prep. Claire and Irena eat at our usual spot in the conference room. They talk indistinguishably from this distance. I pick up my food and walk towards them.

  Irena finishes talking, “at the final stage.”

  Claire says, “You finally decided to join us.”

  “Yes, what are you guys talking about?” I set my plate of pasta down near Claire.

  “I was telling Claire about my study. I’ve reached the sim body stage. That’s the last one before human testing.” Irena forks her salad of mostly pansies and puts it in her mouth.

  I scrap a small section of baked-on cheese from the edge of my plate for somewhere to start eating the pasta bake. “A sim body, that sounds awesome. I can’t wait to do something like that. What is it anyway?”

  Claire starts laughing. “That’s just like you Conor, getting excited without knowing what it’s about.” She searches the red murky depths of her soup and spoons out a big chunk of plantain banana according to my tech. That food choice exceeds my experience.

  Irena points her fork at me while she swallows a mouthful of her scrambled egg (probably a vegetarian substitute) that leaked from her sandwich. “That’s fine, Conor. You just thought of the possibilities and wanted to do it. It is a tangible model of a target area. Unlike most sims, this is the real thing.”

  “How do you make one?”

  Irena takes a bite out of the remaining half of her sandwich and holds the contents inside the bread with the other hand. “It is just like a regular sim. You design it on a computer. It gives you the materials needed. You setup everything and add tech to grow the right number of cells in the nutrient fluid. The tech assembles the cells into the designed structures.”

  Childish excitement of opening presents rushes through me. “That. Is. just awesome.” I take my first mouth of the hot pasta, cooled from extremely hot. The melty cheese seamlessly transitions to the hints of ragu and contrasts with the toasted breadcrumbs.

  “If you’re done being amazed, can we move on?” Claire impatiently searches her soup before taking a mouthful of empty broth.

  I take another spoon and hold it up. “Sure, did your micro-tech come in?”

  “It’s good you asked. I’ve been looking at it the last few days. I still can’t believe it works.” Claire starts spooning up the remaining broth.

  I smile a little about feeling the same as Claire, just a minute ago. “What’s so different about it?”

  “It is just tiny. Normal H-tech is 50 to 75 nanometers in size. The micro-tech is ten to twenty times smaller than that. How does it all fit?” she asks forgetting about everything else.

  “Couldn’t they have shrunken down the components?” Irena chases peas around her plate with her fork then uses a spoon to help.

  “That isn’t possible. The physical constraints limit the size. There must be something else going on. I just can’t figure it out. What do you think I should do, Conor?” Claire cuts up the piece of mango left at the bowl’s bottom. Tech says it tastes sour, but not too sour and offers to sim it. No.

  Her expectant eyes have me thinking for a few secs. “Is there anything different about micro-tech except its size?”

  “There is one unusual thing. A power source has to be connected through the node until the tech reaches the destination. That could mean something.” Claire empties her bowl and sets it aside with the spoon. She wipes her mouth with the cloth napkin on her lap.

  I suggest something familiar to me, but foreign to her. “Then you have just one choice. Do an experiment.”

  Claire puts the napkin on the table. “I’ll just check the specs to see what happens.”

  “Come on, where’s your adventurous personality now?”

  “I’ve never had one.” She strategically picks up her spoon and wipes it with the napkin from before.

  “It’s not that tricky.”

  “I could do it. I just need a sim of what's happening. I can use a sealed tube filled with saline. Then, I just have to add H-tech and micro-tech. Use a node and see what is going on.”

  I resist the urge to clap. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “If you two are finished with the love fest, we can move onto something more inclusive of the group, children,” Gary comes between us.

  “What?” Claire asks deadpan.

  “Be serious, Gary, I don’t do anything except argue with her. There’s nothing going on between us, seriously.”

  Gary pokes me with an elbow. “I’m just pulling for a joke. Just be steady.”

  Irena asks, “How is your study going?”

  “I’m excited and relieved it’s almost finished. The first two weeks helped get everything setup. I made six dream progressions for the thirty subjects,” Gary answers. He sits a little straighter.

  Claire looks to Gary. “What probs did you run into? Anything to do with tech?”

  “That’s exactly what happened. The daily dream uploading had some bumps. The subjects didn’t always put on a node every day. The AI sim couldn’t be trusted half the time. The evolution is you can dictate what feelings the sim gives viewers.” Gary turns back to his plate of lasagna.

  “How did you solve the probs?”

  “I tracked down the subjects that didn’t connect and talked with them about it. The study needed dreams to be created as I went. If the AI sim didn’t work, I just had to do it myself. I managed to keep the gears turning.” Gary sighs with relief.

  “What do you think the results are going to be?” Irena nibbles on the crust of her sandwich before using it wipe up the salad dressing.

  “I think it’s going to do the job, my work is good enough to see a result. A few slips aren’t going to ruin anything.” Gary takes a generous mouthful of lasagna.

  I ask something that should make him feel better about his hard work. “At which point could this become main stream?” A stiff delivery works wonders.

  “It could happen today. The biggest prob wi
th it is the hands-on requirement. You need a node on for some part of each day. The dream designing devours time. You spend a few hours for each dream week. The dreaming totals just a few hours of remembered time. To get it to go smoothly… will take a few years. The legal issues are another thing.” Gary cleans up his lips with a napkin and returns to eating. He must want to get back to work or something.

  “That doesn’t sound like anytime soon.”

  Irena says, “It’s been fun. I better get back to my sim body.” She takes her blue glass plate and returns it before heading upstairs.

  “I think you should test out what happens with the micro-tech.”

  “There must be some other way to check how it works. What can seeing it show me?” Claire empties the space before her, supports her head with her hands, and turns to Gary and me.

  “I’ll leave you two alone. I had a big breakfast. I won’t end up eating any more than this,” Gary says interrupting us. He ferries his plate to his desk and continues eating/working.

  “Just try it. It not going to make you forget everything or something more permanent, is it?” Not a good point.

  “How did you want to do it?” Claire says with almost no energy.

  She agreed? “I can get most of the supplies we need. You have the micro-tech, right?”

  Claire looks across at her empty plate. “Yes, the capped tube is the hard one to find.”

  “I’ve actually found a way to get that. Can architectural tech make anything you want?” I start shoveling food into my mouth, the four spoons still left.

  “Yes, we just can’t use the office to do that.”

  A full mouth speeds up chewing and swallowing. “Not a prob. You seem familiar with how to do it. You can make one at your apartment. I’ll get everything ready while you’re gone.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I smile smugly at this understanding. “I guarantee you are going to like the results.”

  “Nothing has happened yet.”

  “Wait and see.”

  Assembly

  Tues 7/11/17 1:22 p.m.

  Claire leaves the office. Her black sweater shows a modified argyle with elongated hexagons of grey, white, and lime green wrapped around her tummy. The familiar light grey pants fit in. I decide to go to the sim body lab, the only one open, for what we need. Irena monitors the construction of her sim body — an arm and torso, the arm finished until the elbow. The interior parts build out above this point. The torso’s skin ends at the stomach allowing organ creation. It can’t ever support itself with an incomplete circulatory system.

  “You got far.”

  “Everything should be modeled by tomorrow. I just need a realistic compilation of tissues. Subdivisions happen after assembly completes. The sim creator suggested making it this way for efficiency. Each part features a genetic mod, mostly with structure.” She moves her arms revealing the desk screen. Most lab screens show to everyone.

  “That sounds odd. Why can’t each one be printed by itself?”

  She nods before saying anything. “Firstly, assembly, not printing. I don’t understand it, either. It’s not as if I’m making a living creature or something. The organs live inside independent fields. The tech travels a smaller movement path. It makes everything go faster.”

  I peek at the screen. “Sure, no worries. I’m in here for some saline and H-tech.”

  “That should be around here somewhere. I can help you look,” she says as she moves her various pads onto the table.

  “Thanks for the offer. I can get it just fine.”

  I look for the sterile saline tap in the cupboard that says cell growth medium. The growth solution mixes with saline before use. Just a big container of growing solution sits inside. A double-ended faucet sticks out from the opposing side. A flat black disc protrudes from one half. A shielded radiation source inside the tap sterilizes anything that comes out. Finding a syringe enters my mind. A drawer holds syringes — all of them glass. I get a big one and a glass needle capped at both ends. Opening the base of the needle and attaching it to the syringe happens from muscle memory. I remove the other cap, insert it into the port, and take out 50 or so ml. Recapping the needle upon extraction just happens.

  I find the stick-on ports that give syringe access. The assortment of tech across the lab overwhelms with twenty-eight options. H-tech appears somewhere in the middle. I grab the smallest size vial and have everything. Claire will get the container. I reach my desk to keep everything from the lab on the glass top.

  I review the class from the first week, while I wait. The macro organization of the peripheral and central nervous systems wrapped up yesterday. The types and function of neural cells come next. Glial cells provide support for neurons, immunologically, nutritionally, and environmentally. Neurons are the fundamental units of the nervous system. I have plenty of examples on how different parts interact to perform basic and complex tasks.

  Today we get in-depth on neuronal signaling within and between cells. This means the generation of the three types of potential: synaptic, axonal, and pre-synaptic. How does this encode info and affect other parts of the neuron, other cells? The effects of neurotransmitters and receptors on neighboring neurons and more widespread action (neuro-hormones) concludes everything.

  Claire walks in with a clear cylinder at her side. She stops at my desk and sets it down. We’re almost ready.

  Claire looks over my supplies. “Do you have everything we need?”

  Nod. “I have almost everything here. I don’t have the node or micro-tech.” I pick up the container and think it must be glass.

  “Let’s go to my office and get that. Here, I’ll lock your computer.” She uses the screen to enter some combination of keys. A blue outline appears on the edge of the desk.

  I have a need to touch the glass top. I get closer and feel a tingling in my fingers. It becomes resistance. I go with Claire to her office. She just opens the door. It must unlock just for her.

  “You can stay here. It’s just going to take a sec.”

  “Sure.” I take a seat in one of the two chairs, on the right of a big couch that backs the space. No more than one person ever waits here. The comfortable office — similar size to Mekova’s — includes a storage and workspace instead of a server room. My second time teaching fills my head. I don’t have the lesson memorized. Claire returns with three things and gives me each one, keeping one for herself.

  “Tech node and additional power (sparkling packet of pink goo). I have the micro-tech right here. Is that everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, just checking.”

  We leave the office with me first and reach the desk, which Claire unlocks. Claire silently preps the tech microscope in the desk for a good view. I measure the volume of the container she made. Dump out the saline in the syringe until reaching 25 ml, 5 less than the volume of the container. I did this at least a thousand times in my doctor years. Set access port to sterile, stick to H-tech vial, access with syringe, and fill vial with water. The displaced air enters the syringe plunger through the second lumen in the needle. Turn the vial upside down and draw back the saline now mixed with tech, allowing the air to return. “Micro-tech?”

  “Right here.”

  Claire hands over a small disc with access for the needle. Repeat the same process as for the H-tech. The syringe holds 27 ml, now. Put down syringe. Grab the final container and the access port, detached from the empty vial. Attach the port, set to allow access, connect syringe, push in solution, and return to magnification area.

  “Those pea size objects in that row are H-tech. The lentil size particles are micro-tech.” Claire points at the magnified image on the desk.

  “If you look at the heat map, something is at the end of the container.”

  She moves the viewer to that section. The row of H-tech borders some other tech.

  Why is it not touching the H-tech? From what I know, the tech creates a network with physical connections
. “Why is that by itself?”

  “I think it is just malfunctioning. This tech is used?”

  I think back to the filled vial. Was it dry silvery sand or wet silvery sand? “I don’t know.”

  “It happens either way, if the tech isn’t handled properly.”

  That makes sense. One out of a million could stop working. The manufacturing tolerances couldn’t too exact. “Are you ready to put on the node?”

  “Yes.”Claire has the power source connected to the node and sticks it to the container. The tech off by itself disintegrates into four pieces, the micro-tech (not damaged H-tech). Claire removes the power source. The tech reassembles as before. It moves around collecting four more particles, assembling another micro-tech. Each new one helps assemble. In a few secs, a row of micro-tech forms parallel to the H-tech.

  “That’s how it works!” She doesn’t know what to do with herself.

  “Are you glad we did the experiment?”

  “The results showed me what is going on. It worked.” She looks at me, then at the picture.

  I pat the table. “You have your answer.”

  “Thanks for helping.”

  “We should do this again sometime.”

  “Maybe.”

  Romanticism

  Tues 7/11/17 6:08 p.m.

  I head home after an unusually long day. The early wakeup call thanks to my mission means I would like nothing better than going to bed, right now. Instead, I leave the office with Claire. Our morning convo/argument surely faded, right?

  “Hi, Claire. I haven’t seen Zhou anywhere around. Is everything okay between you two?”

  “Way to jump in there, Conor.” Claire almost snaps back.

  I soften my voice. “So I take it, something is up.”

  Her eyes almost brim over with tears, leaving a moist glisten. “Zhou found me cold and impersonal. It just takes me a ridiculous amount of time to feel comfortable around people.” Her voice cracks at Zhou.