by J. J. Harkin
“Yeah, sure,” replied the other, doing his best not to betray a milligram of concern. Yet he did nothing further until the video was fully uploaded to the Web. Such mysterious occurrences would certainly make for a hit video, and he had friends to impress.
Chapter III
A MEETING OF FRIENDS
It was a good thing that David still lived so close to LA, or Den’s loneliness might have festered into depression. A phone call to his childhood friend had been Den’s first priority after Victoria’s abrupt departure, for David had known her nearly as well as Den during their youth. They arranged to meet first thing in the morning. Maria did her best to imitate concern when Den called, but she had a daily performance to attend to, and had never really known Victoria that well. Their discussion was a brief and inexplicably awkward cellular teleconference. Den spent the rest of that lonely day contacting the scant collection of relatives he had left. He had never arranged a funeral before, so it was a relief that Victoria had made such elaborate plans ahead of time. The bed in his hotel room was no more comfortable than a pile of fluffed-up woodchips, but he did not care. Denny had plenty to think about that night.
In his mind he had already begun naming himself as such: “Denny.” Perhaps it was because he knew Victoria would no longer be there to affectionately call him by the nickname. He had not cried a drop yet, though in truth he wanted to. Victoria had died peacefully, almost blessedly, and knowing this made it difficult to be overtly sad. She had been sick to death of her dreary existence, and he knew it. Though Den did not think it was a suicidal urge, there was a very real part of him which wished he could join her, whatever that meant, wherever in the cosmos she might be. Whom, beside David perhaps, would be there to cheer him on now? Den had lost his greatest supporter, and that fact was at war with the knowledge that Victoria really had been quite ready to go. Strangest of all was the fleeting presence of the mysterious messenger, Joseph. What might he have said to her so soon before the end? At that moment Den would have given anything to know the answer.
The morning found him waiting patiently for David to arrive at the little coffee shop they had selected. David had been his next-door neighbor during all the years Victoria had raised him. Den’s mother had wandered off when he was seven, never to be seen again by anyone, and so Victoria had taken over the role of mother. She had never even complained; it had been Victoria’s joy to raise him. Thus Den and David had become fast friends, sharing a common interest in tinkering with any machine they could get their curious hands on.
At last David bustled through the door of the coffee shop, making a beeline for his old friend excitedly. “Denny!” he said as they embraced, clapping their hands on one another’s backs heartily. Both knew it should be a somber occasion, but they could never be less than overjoyed to see one another.
Before long they were deep in talk, discussing Victoria’s life, death, and any other fond memories they could think of. Though he did not know why, Den found himself leaving Joseph out of the conversation entirely. Perhaps he felt guilty about not being present at the exact moment of Victoria’s death, when he should have been at her side. Maybe he was reticent to direct the focus toward the odd messenger when they should be focusing on the loss of Victoria. Or maybe it was simply that he took all too seriously what Joseph had last told him: “Keep it a secret!”
They had only just finished discussing the unforgettable occasion upon which Victoria had dressed up as Spider Woman for Halloween, when Den remembered he had brought David’s Magic U-Ball along. “And how, my friend, does this little gadget function?” he asked, setting the little ball down between them.
“Ah, yes, the U-Ball. What do you think?” David seemed genuinely interested in his opinion.
“I think that it actually works!” replied Den, smiling. “I simply can’t imagine how.” The two waited expectantly for the waitress to fill their coffees before continuing.
“It reads electromagnetic information in the air around it,” explained David hurriedly, once they were alone. “When first held, the U-Ball measures every electromagnetic signal nearby. Then it screens out every waveform that is obviously non-human, which is actually not very difficult, as we happen to have highly specific thought signatures.”
“If you say so,” put in Den reluctantly.
“Next the U-Ball separates every remaining thought into text, and the element of text which is most often repeated is always the foremost thought on the mind of the person holding the U-Ball!”
“Seriously?” Den was already certain the invention worked quite accurately, but he had engaged in enough mind-blowing conversation in the last few days to last him the rest of the year.
“Yeah! The current version only translates into English, but I’m working on that.”
“Seriously?” repeated Den.
“Yeah!” David shot back.
“And it can somehow find my electromagnetic frequency without electrodes or tuning?”
“Yeah!” David was clearly beginning to enjoy the hard sell. “You see, it turns out that the ancients really did have it right concerning the human mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the ancient Hindus said that the mind exists apart from the body, as evidenced by their ability to astral project beyond themselves without losing the ability to think.”
Den thought this a bit much. “But isn’t that just a bunch of religious superstition?”
“Some believe so, but the out-of-body experience has recently become a confirmed scientific fact. Certain people are for some reason capable of leaving their bodies and traveling to wherever it is they want, and during these experiences they never cease to utilize their cognitive capabilities, which suggests that the mind and the body are separate things.”
“It may suggest that, but I doubt it proves it.”
“I think it does.” David was hurrying along now, so that he could not be interrupted. “We now have substantive studies proving the abilities of those capable of this so-called astral projection. For instance, we can draw something on a chalkboard in location A, have a person astral project there from location B, and afterward have the subject accurately describe what was drawn on the chalkboard, even though we know there is no way they could ever have had direct physical knowledge of it. So it is possible to prove that one can truly leave their body in thought – or whatever – and continue to experience the same objective reality that everyone else is having exclusively in-body!”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with the U-Ball,” said Den, doing his best not to seem unnecessarily negative.
“Right. Well, the point is that the U-Ball doesn’t have to be attached to you to be able to pick up your thoughts. The U-Ball is just one way of demonstrating the fact that we all have energy fields which extend out past the perimeters of our physical bodies, just like the ancient Hindus said.”
“They did?”
“Yeah! They called it the chakra system. Just walk into any bookstore’s self-help section and you’re likely to find numerous books, albeit largely unscientific, on how chakras are supposed to work. There are even those who claim they can see them, but that’s beside the point. The U-Ball isn’t about being able to prove there are chakras, it’s about proving that the mind indeed extends outside the body. Watch. Place the U-Ball equidistant between us.”
Den complied, placing the ball between them on a saucer to stop it from rolling off the table. At his touch the U-Ball quickly displayed the word “Urinate,” and they laughed.
“Have to pee, do you?” David asked.
“Yes,” Den admitted.
“Well, just watch for a moment before you go,” David said, appearing to concentrate on the U-Ball. Immediately the word “Watch” began to orbit the horizontal diameter of the orb. This was precisely what David had just asked of Den, and it therefore came as little surprise. Yet directly the ball displayed a new slogan: “See?” At this Den felt impressed, knowing he had harbored n
o intention of saying anything of the kind.
“See?” exclaimed David in triumph. “Distance matters with this kind of technology, so in this situation it will respond to whichever of our thoughts seem to be the most focused on it. Conversely, it is far more likely to display only your thoughts if you hold it close.”
As the U-Ball displayed “Urgent!” Den hurriedly got up to use the bathroom. When he returned, David was still chuckling to himself. They spent the next little while with the U-Ball still placed between them, trying to see which one could pry it from displaying the top thought of the other. After a few minutes they got back to talking.
“You see how there is some sort of fitness to this?” David asked excitedly. “We are exercising our minds against one another to see who is the victor in a game of influence! Just ask yourself how many times we invisibly experience things like this interpersonally: in debates, during decision making, and in all kinds of everyday situations.”
“It is strange,” replied Den, grudgingly beginning to believe. “I’ve never been able to see my thoughts as they arise from… wherever they come from…”
“Well, none of us are sure of that yet, are we? But its like I hinted: the ancients said it has something to do with a system of chakras which influence the body through their connection with the spine.”
“Fascinating. So they really believed that the human body was only a vehicle for something else?”
“Yeah!” repeated David, for what felt like the twentieth time.
“But what does this have to do with your profession, though? I thought you were still putting together designer robotics over at NERD.”
“Oh, I’m still there alright,” confirmed David wisely. “But think of how much easier it would be to communicate with an artificial intelligence if it constantly knew what you were thinking about. In that way it would be less of an artificial intelligence, and more an extension of one’s own consciousness.”
Den was finally beginning to understand. “Ah, so this is a way of solving the mystery of what intelligence actually is, then?”
“Yes. You see, it’s been years since we wrapped up designing the perfect cyborg. We can easily put together a robot capable of carrying out any action we program it to do. It’s all just motors, sensors, and hydraulics. Where we haven’t made much progress is the area of artificial intelligence. We can program a machine to always display the same – for lack of a better word – thinking patterns, but we have no way of programming a machine to truly think for itself.”
“Machines can learn, though, can’t they?”
“They can record information and modify their behavior as previously specified, surely, but the more we experiment the more we find that this is not the same thing as independent thought. The mechanical intelligences do not have a true sense of self, and do not develop in their thinking patterns. They are completely predictable, and this lacks the mental agility of a human.”
“Yes, I’ve always thought that a free mind is a bit more like a flow of information than it is a reservoir of filed knowledge.” Den was thankful to finally be contributing to the conversation more substantially. “I think I can see what you mean.”
David was already hurrying onward. “Exactly! So I had the idea that an artificial intelligence would need to be tapping into some flow of information outside of itself, and us humans were the best source I could think of.”
“Oh,” replied Den blankly.
“This may prove to be the perfect avenue to eventually create cyborgs capable of displaying humanlike intelligence. Perhaps they will display and act upon the thoughts of humans, or maybe they will simply listen to, analyze, and imitate them. Probably the former rather than the latter. You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve already got a U-Ball wired into my computer at home. It’s amazing how many messages one brain can send out in just a second or two. I learned early on to leave it switched-off most of the time, as I start getting back responses from people I don’t even realize I’ve contacted. It’s almost funny, because the automated messages my mind sends out always tend to be a little too direct and honest to qualify as socially acceptable. These days I try to be watching the screen when the system’s picking things up, but it’s certainly come in handy when I’ve needed to get a lot of writing done in a short space.”
This gave Den reason to pause, and he looked worried. “But this means that my thoughts are no longer safe in my own head! Right? If the government were to get hold of a technology like this, none of us would ever be safe again!”
“Believe me,” continued David, unshaken, “they’re not going to know any more than the psychics on their payroll already secretly tell them. This technology is not yet developed to anywhere near the levels which the best psychics have long since surpassed, though I do see where you’re going with that.”
“So you’ve been wise enough to keep this a secret, then?” asked Den tentatively.
“You know me well,” nodded David. “Yes, I’ve kept this tidbit to myself. I’ve already contracted to sell the U-Ball to fund my endeavors, but through a Malaysian toy company, far from the reach of our government’s interests.”
“And the National Enterprise for Robotics Development has no idea about it either?”
“Nope. As soon as the funds begin to roll in, I actually plan to sever ties with them in favor of further developing my ideas for some sort of U-Ball-guided, intelligent cyborg.”
“Ingenious.” Den was not exaggerating, for he was mightily impressed. “So you’re going to create a cyborg which somehow does whatever is on its owner’s mind?”
“Yes. I think it will be something like that,” David said. “I’ve just gotta get some investment capital rolling in through sale of the U-Ball first.”
“Hmm,” began Den, with a stretch of his arms. “I must say that I find myself completely surrounded by genius of late.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I wasn’t certain I was going to mention this, but I may have been given quite an idea myself.” Before he knew it Den had explained all about Joseph, their unusual conversation concerning hydrogen separation, and the slightly odd circumstances surrounding Victoria’s quiet death.
“It really does sound entirely possible, now that I come to think of it. I think I’ve heard of engines that can run on hydrogen.” David appeared truly interested, but did not seem particularly worried about what Joseph might have said to Victoria. “But it’s difficult to imagine why nobody’s ever tried it on a broad scale if it’s truly a viable option. And he said you could just have the idea without any kind of compensation?”
“Yes. That was what was so strange about it all. He just showed up, delivered some message to Granny, gave me this idea, and then disappeared.” Den momentarily stared off into space. “I don’t know. Maybe I should just stick to inventing things I actually thought up myself…” They both pondered for a minute.
David was the first to speak. “But how could you ever certainly prove that you came up with any idea for yourself anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that if the U-Ball proves anything it’s that thoughts exist outside ourselves in the air around us. I heard once that the guy who invented the Xerox just woke up one morning with the entire idea in his head! As a matter of fact, I can’t even prove to you that I came up with the idea for the U-Ball in the first place. The idea came to me during an exceptionally colorful daydream which some might describe as a trance state. What if the idea was just a gift given to me by some sort of higher power or something?”
“Higher power? Is this ancient Hinduism again?”
“I don’t know,” said David reluctantly, “but it’s just like I was saying about the U-Ball. The thoughts it displays come from a flow of information in the air around it. Do those thoughts certainly belong to anyone in particular?”
“I would say they belong to the people whom are influencing the U-Ball, but I see where you’re going with this. To refuse to
build something just because I know somebody else originated the idea is like stopping the flow of thought unnecessarily.”
“Since you have permission from Joseph to pursue this, you should. The original thought was his, but for some reason he wanted you to have it.”
“So he’s my higher power?” asked Den. “Is that it?”
“Of course not, but you should still pursue the idea.”
“Alright, maybe I will. Perhaps you can loan me some of your Magic U-Ball money. Unless of course you’re so hung-up on free thought that you can’t bring yourself to charge anything for them…”
“Ha!” David laughed, seeing that Den’s logic had finally brought them back down to Earth. “Don’t worry, Den,” he continued. “Believe me, I’m not so high-minded that I’d let myself starve to death. While the origin of the idea for the U-Ball remains murky, I fully intend to charge my customers for all the hard work I’ve done to make it a reality ever since.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” finished Den.
“Are we ready to go, then?”
So they agreed, and the two men left the coffee shop closer friends for the experience.
The funeral was scheduled to take place the next day. Den was thankful David offered him a place to stay the night. The lack of sleep was beginning to weigh upon him heavily, and he did not think he could stand a second night in the hotel. After much encouragement from David, he spent the morning before the funeral calling around to every bike messenger service in LA he could find a number for, but made no progress in locating any employee fitting Joseph’s description.
It turned out to be one of those rare, rainy Southern California days. The tiny funeral service had to be capped with tarps, hats, and umbrellas. In the end the total attendance was only ten. Most of these were expected to be present for the reading of the will after the funeral as a courtesy, though the obligation was not likely to prove particularly profitable. Victoria had lived a strictly middle-class lifestyle, and collected little wealth, but her friends hoped they might at least be left some sentimental artifact or another to remember her by. The swift ceremony went precisely as she had planned it, and Den felt his grandmother would have been pleased.