by Neil Clarke
Glancing out the corner of my eye, I observed the movements of Ah Hui, Balin’s controller. I was familiar with how Ah Hui fought. He always stepped forward with his left foot and punched with his right fist. I was going to surprise him with a low spinning sweep kick to knock him off his feet. Once he was on the ground, the fight would basically be over.
Ah Hui stepped forward with his left foot. Here it comes. I was about to crouch down and begin my sweep, but Balin’s foot moved and kicked up the dirt at his feet, blinding me in an instant. Next, his leg swept low along the ground, and I was the one knocked off my feet. My eyes squeezed shut, I wrapped my arms about my head, preparing to endure a fusillade of punches.
However, the fight did not proceed the way I imagined. The punches did land against my body, but there was no force behind them at all. At first, I thought Balin was probably tired, but soon realized that was not the case. Ah Hui’s own punches against the air were forceful and precise, but Balin apparently was holding back on purpose so that his punches landed on my body like caresses.
Without warning, the punching stopped. Something warm and smelly pressed itself against my face.
Laughter erupted around me. When I finally understood what had happened, a wave of heat suffused my face.
Balin had sat on me with his nude and dirty bottom.
Ah Hui knew that Balin’s punches were useless, which was why he had come up with such a dirty trick.
I pushed Balin away and leapt up off the ground. In one quick motion, I pressed Balin to the ground and held him down. Tears poured out of my eyes, stung by the kicked-up sand as well as humiliation and rage. Balin looked up at me, his swollen eyes also filled with tears, as though he knew exactly how I felt at that moment.
Then it hit me. He’s just imitating. I raised my fist.
“Why didn’t you punch with real force, like I wanted you to?”
My fist pounded against Balin’s thin body, thumping as though I was punching a hollow shell made of fragile plywood.
“Why don’t you hit me back?”
My fingers felt the teeth beneath his lips rattling.
“Tell me why!”
A crisp snap of bone. A wound opened over Balin’s right brow, the torn skin extended to the tip of his eye. Pink and white fascia and fat spilled out from under the dark skin, and bright red blood flowed freely, soon pooling on the sandy earth under him.
A heavy, fish-like scent wafted from his body.
Terrified, I got off him and stepped back. The other children were stunned as well.
The dust settled, and Balin lay still, curled up like a slaughtered lamb. He glanced at me with his left eye, the one not covered in blood. The tranquil orb still betrayed no emotion. In that moment, for the first time, I felt that he was like me: he was made of flesh and blood; he was a person with a soul.
The moment lasted only seconds. Almost instinctively, I realized that if I had not been treating Balin as a human being until this moment, then it was impossible for me to do so in the future either.
I brushed off the dirt on my pants and shoved my way through the crowd of children, never looking back.
I enter “Ghost” mode, experiencing everything experienced by Balin, trapped in his VR suit.
I—Balin—we are standing on some beautiful tropical island. Based on my suggestion, the environment artist has combined the sights and vegetation from multiple South China Sea islands to create this reality. Even the angle and temperature of light are calculated to be accurate for the latitude.
My intent is to give Balin the sensation of being back home—his real home. But the environment doesn’t seem to have reduced his terror.
The view whirls violently: sky, sand, the ocean nearby, scattered vines, and from time to time, even rough gray polygonal structures whose textures have yet to be applied.
I feel dizzy. This is the result of visual signals and bodily motion being out of sync. The eyes tell my brain that I’m moving, but the vestibular system tells my brain that I’m not. The conflict between the two sets of signals gives rise to a feeling of sickness.
For Balin, we have deployed the most advanced techniques to shrink the signal delay to within five milliseconds. In addition, we are using motion capture technology to synchronize the movements between his virtual body and his physical body. He could move freely on the omnidirectional treadmill, but his position wouldn’t shift one inch.
We’re treating him like a guest in first class, anticipating all his needs.
Balin stands rooted to his spot. He can’t understand how the world in his eyes is related to the bright, sterile lab he was in just a few minutes ago.
“This is useless,” I bark at the technicians through my microphone. “We’ve got to get him to move!”
Balin’s head whips around. The surround sound system in his helmet warns him of movements behind his body. A quaking wave ripples through the dense jungle, and a flock of birds erupts into the air. Something gigantic is shoving its way through the vegetation, making its way toward Balin. Motionless, Balin stares at the bush.
A massive herd of prehistoric creatures bursts from the jungle. Even I, no expert on evolutionary biology, can tell that they don’t belong to the same geologic epoch. The technicians have used whatever models they can find in the database to try to get Balin to move.
Still, he stands there like a tree stump, enduring waves of Tyrannosaurus rexes, saber-toothed tigers, monstrous dragonflies, crocodilian-shaped ancestors of dinosaurs, and strange arthropods as they rush at him and then, howling and screaming, sweep through him like wisps of mist. This is a bug in the physics engine, but if we were to fix the bug and fully simulate the physical experience, the VR user would not be able to endure the impact.
It isn’t over yet.
The ground under Balin begins to quake and split. Trees lean over and topple. Volcanoes erupt and crimson molten lava spills out of the earth, coalescing into bloody rivers. Massive waves more than ten meters tall charge at our position from the sea.
“I think you might be overdoing this a bit,” I say into the mike. I hear faint giggles.
Imagine how a primitive human tossed into the middle of such an apocalyptic scene would feel. Would he consider himself a savior who is suffering for the sins of the entire human race? Or would he be on the cusp of madness, his senses on the verge of collapse?
Or would he behave like Balin: no reaction at all?
Suddenly, I understand the truth.
I back out of Ghost mode, and remove Balin’s helmet. Sensors are studded like pearls all over his skull. His eyes are squeezed tightly shut, the wrinkles around them so deep that they resemble insect antennae.
“Let’s stop here today.” I sigh helplessly, recalling that afternoon long ago when I had punched him until he bled.
As the time approached for all the high school students to declare our intended subjects of study before the college entrance examination, the war between my father and me heated up.
According to his grand plan, I was supposed to major in political science or history in college, but I had zero interest in those subjects, which I viewed as painted whores at the whim of those in power. I wanted to major in a hard science like physics, or at the minimum biology—something that according to Mr. Lu involved “fundamental questions.”
My father was contemptuous of my reasons. He pointed to the houses in our ancestral compound, and the tea leaves drying over the racks in the yard, glistening like gold dust in the bright sunlight.
“Do you think there are any questions more fundamental than making a living and feeding your family?”
It was like discussing music theory with a cud-chewing cow.
I gave up trying to convince Father. I had my own plan. With Mr. Lu’s help, I obtained permission from the teachers to cram for common subjects like math, Chinese, and English with students who intended to declare for the humanities, but then I would sneak away to study physics, chemistry, and biology with the sci
ence students. If class schedules conflicted, I would make my own choices and then make up the missed work later.
My teachers were willing to let me get away with it because they had their own selfish hopes. Rather than forcing someone who had no interest to study politics and history, they thought they might as well let me follow my heart. If they got lucky, it was possible that I would do extraordinarily well on the college entrance examination as a science student and bring honor to them all.
I thought my plan would fool my busy father, who was away from home more often than not. I was going to surprise him at the last minute, when I had to fill out the desired majors and top choice schools right before the examination. Even if he blew up at me then, it would be too late.
I was so naïve.
On the day we were supposed to fill out the forms, all my friends received a copy of the blank form except me. I thought the head teacher had made a mistake.
“Uh . . . your father already filled it out for you.” The teacher dared not meet my eyes.
I don’t remember how I made it home that day. Like a lost, homeless dog, I wandered the streets and alleyways of the town aimlessly until I found myself in front of the ancestral compound.
Father was entertaining himself by playing with Balin. He had dug up an old set of army uniforms and put them on Balin. The loose folds and wide pant legs hung on Balin like a tent, making him resemble a monkey who had stolen some human clothing. Father had Balin follow orders he had learned during the time he was in the army: stand at attention, stand at ease, right dress, left dress, march in place, and so on. When I was in elementary school, Father had enjoyed ordering me around like a drill sergeant at the parade ground, and I had hated those “games” more than anything else.
It had been years since he had tried anything like that with me, but now he had found a new recruit.
A soldier who would obey every one of his commands without question.
“One-two-one! One-two-one! Forwaaaaard-march!” As he barked out the commands and demonstrated the moves, Balin goose-stepped around the yard, his pant legs muddy as they dragged on the ground.
I stepped between them and faced my father. “You have no intention of letting me go to college, is that it?”
“Riiiiight-dress!” My father whipped his head to the right and shuffled his feet. I heard the sound of feet scrabbling against the ground in synchrony behind me.
“You knew about my plan a long time ago, didn’t you?” I demanded. “But you said nothing before you played your trick so I wouldn’t have a chance to stop you.”
“Maaaaarch in place!”
Enraged, I turned around and held Balin still, not allowing him to proceed any longer like a mindless drone. But he seemed unable to stop. The pant legs slapped against the ground, whipping up wisps of dust.
I grabbed his head and forced him to lock gazes with me. I pulled out the electric lighter from my pocket and flicked it; a pale blue arc burst into life next to his temple. Balin screamed like a baby.
I looked into his eyes; now he belonged to me.
“You have no right to control me! All you care about is your business. Have you ever thought about what I want for my future?”
As I screamed at my father, Balin marched around us, his finger also pointing at Father, his mouth also screaming. The circle he made around the two of us tightened on each loop.
“I’m going to college whether you want me to go or not. And I’m going to study whatever I want!” I clenched my jaw. Balin’s finger was almost touching my father. “Let me tell you something, Father: I never want to become like you.”
The militaristic arrogance melted from my father. He stood there, his face fallen and back hunched, like crops that had been bitten by frost. I expected him to hit back, hard, as was his wont, but he did not.
“I knew. I’ve always known that you don’t want to walk the path others have paved for you,” my father’s voice faded until it was barely a whisper. “You remind me so much of myself when I was your age. But I have no choice—”
“So you want me to repeat your life?”
My father’s knees buckled. I thought he was going to fall, but he knelt on the ground and embraced Balin.
“You can’t leave!” he shouted. “I know what’s going to happen if you go away to college. No one who leaves this town ever returns.”
I struggled against the empty air so that Balin, moving in sync with me, could free himself from my father’s grasp. As long as I could remember, my father had never hugged me.
“Don’t be so childish! Open your eyes! See the world for what it is.”
Balin was like a wind-up toy that had malfunctioned. His limbs whipped about in a frenzy; the military uniform he wore was torn in multiple places, revealing the dark, unreflective skin.
“The way you spoke just now is just like your mother.” Another pale blue spark came to life over Balin’s temple. Abruptly, he ceased struggling, and held my father tightly like a long-lost lover. “Are you going to abandon me just like she did?”
I was stunned.
I had never thought about this matter from my father’s perspective. I had always thought that he wanted to keep me close at hand because he was selfish, narrow-minded, but I had never seen it as a reaction to the fear of being abandoned. My mother had left us when I was too young to view it as trauma, but it cast a shadow over the rest of his life.
Wordless, I approached my father, who held on to Balin tightly. I bent down and caressed his spine, no longer as straight as in my memory. Maybe this was as close as the two of us would ever be.
I saw the tears spilling from the corners of Balin’s eyes. For a moment, I doubted myself.
Maybe it isn’t just about control and power, but also love.
There are many things I wish I had known before I turned seventeen.
For example, the fact that most of the structures in the human brain have something to do with motor functions, including the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, the brainstem, the motor region of the cerebral cortex and the direct projection of the somatosensory cortex to the primary motor cortex, and so on.
For example, the cerebellum contains more neurons than any other part of the brain. As humans evolved, the cerebellar cortex grew in step with the rapidly increasing volume of the frontal lobe.
For example, any interaction with the outside world, whether informational or physical, including moving limbs, manipulating tools, gesticulating, speaking, glancing, making faces—each ultimately requires activating a series of muscles to realize.
For example, an arm contains twenty-six separate muscles, and each muscle on average contains a hundred motor units, each made up by a motor neuron and its associated skeletal muscle fibers. Thus, the motion of a single arm is governed by a possibility space at least 2^2600 in size, a number far greater than the total number of atoms in the universe.
Human motion is so complex and subtle, and each casual movement represents the result of so much computation, analysis, and planning that even the most advanced robots are incapable of moving as well as a three-year-old.
And we haven’t even discussed all the information, emotion, and culture embodied in human motion.
On the way to the high-speed rail station, my father maintained his silence, only clutching my suitcase tightly. The northbound train finally appeared before us, shiny, new, smooth in outline, like something that was going to slide into the unknowable future the moment the brakes were released.
In the end, my father and I failed to reach a compromise. If I was going to college in Beijing, he would not pay for any of my expenses.
“Unless you promise to return,” he said.
I gazed through him, as though I was already seeing the future, a future that belonged to me. For that, I was willing to be the black sheep from a white flock, the sheep in perpetual exile.
“Dad, take care of yourself.”
I grabbed my suitcase to board the train, but my father refused
to let go of the handle, and the suitcase awkwardly hung between us. A moment later, both of us let go, and the suitcase fell to the ground.
I was about to erupt when my father slapped his heels together to stand at attention, giving me a crisp military salute. Without a word, he turned and left. He had once told me that it was bad luck to say goodbye before going to war. Better to leave each other with other memories.
I watched his diminishing figure, raised my hand, and returned his salute gently.
I did not truly understand the meaning in my gesture.
“I never thought we’d fail because of a wild man,” says my thesis advisor Ouyang, who is also the project leader. He claps me on the shoulder, his smile disguising the sharp edges of his words. “It’s no big deal. Let’s keep on working at this. We still have time.”
But I know him too well. What he really means is We are running out of time.
Or, to put it another way, This is your idea, your project. Whether you can get your degree in time will depend on what you do next.
Of course he will never mention how much of our time he has taken up in the past to handle the random projects he promised business investors.
Frustrated, I massage my scalp. My eyes fall on Balin, now shut in his pink-hued pet enclosure. Eyes glazed, he stares at the floor, as though still not recovered from his ordeal in the VR environment. The contrast between the pink pet enclosure and his appearance is comical, but I can’t make myself laugh.
What would Mr. Lu do?
Everything began with that idle conversation with him years ago concerning “A leads to B.”
Traditional theorists believe that motor control is the result of stored programs. When a person wants to move a certain way, the motor cortex picks out a certain program from its stored repertoire and carries it out much the same way a player piano follows the roll of perforated paper. The program’s instructions determine the activation patterns in the motor regions of the cortex and the spinal cord, which then, in turn, activate the muscles to complete the motion.
This naturally raises the question: the same motion can be carried out in infinite ways. How does the brain store an infinite number of motor programs?