by Terry Persun
“Will do. But maybe I won’t tell him where I got the info. Soon,” he said before hanging up.
Neil placed the phone into his shirt pocket. He stared at the wall and table in front of him. While he was talking with Mavra on the phone, he was also running through potential options for the robbery. For all practical purposes, if it wasn’t some kind of scam that Steffenbraun put together, then that’s what it was, a mere robbery. But he had to think past the stolen machine and consider why it was stolen. Where would these things want to take it?
There were a lot of answers to that last question depending primarily on whether or not the machine actually worked or if it was just another government-funded project that failed miserably.
Neil’s interviews with Strofsky and Craig were similar. They were the two who studied black matter and black holes, respectively. They each had their own ideas of whether the machine might work or not, but neither had any idea what the thing was that shot at the camera. “It just appeared,” Strofsky had said, not even considering how easy it would be to doctor the video. He was naïve and believed everything his colleagues said. Nice man, but not too world savvy. He probably believed it when his students told him their homework had been stolen, too.
Craig, on the other hand, didn’t believe any of it. “Do you have any idea what would happen to a human body if it were to go through such a transition?”
“No,” Neil said. “Tell me.”
“It would be torn apart. Particles would be scattered all over hell. They’d never be put back together. And if they were, it would be impossible to put them back together exactly the same way they came apart. You could have a monster on your hands.”
“Scattered? A Monster.” Neil was more interested in the words as symbols since he and Mavra had come together.
“Millions, perhaps billions of pieces,” Craig said, his eyes wide and his arms crossed over his chest. He was one of the most arrogant men Neil had met in a long time. He had kept his mouth shut around the group the day before, but he obviously, and boisterously, considered the whole thing hogwash. “I’ve wasted enough time here doing absolutely nothing of value.”
“I’ll try to take care of that for you,” Neil said.
“Please do. I have my own research projects to deal with at the university and this is just not where I want to be,” Craig said.
“I understand,” Neil said.
“I hope so, because you can help get me out of here.”
Neil just nodded. Craig was one of those guys who had to get in the last word. If Neil didn’t say another word, then Craig would stop pounding Neil over the head with just another version of what he’d already said.
Neil experienced a whole different interaction when he talked with Lowan and O’Brien, the bioengineering professors. First of all, Neil knew less about bioengineering; so when the conversation moved into the technicalities, it was more interesting; and secondly, the men were focused. Where Strofsky and Craig spent most of their time in their own heads running theories, these two were the hands-on kind of guys. Neil learned a bit about the process of interconnecting electronics with biological beings, he was educated on the latest direct digital body parts (DDBP) technologies, and was introduced to a new name in the advancement of the science he hadn’t heard of: Smedley Klein.
“Who is this guy?” he asked of O’Brien when he mentioned the name. “You’ve both mentioned him, now. Why don’t I know him?”
“Unless you follow this kind of stuff, I’m not surprised,” O’Brien said. “He was a Nobel Prize winner. Years ago. The man made a deal with the government long ago, something to do with his son dying in a government-run project.” O’Brien leaned his elbows on the smooth hardwood table. He shook his head and looked directly into Neil’s eyes.
Neil had been careful to keep his eyes operating together so that he didn’t distract the professors while doing the interviews. But both sides of his brain were rolling along as they always did.
“Like what your parents did to you,” O’Brien said. “The story goes that Klein was experimenting with his own son. He had Asperger’s syndrome. The son did. Brilliant thinker even at a young age, mathematically speaking.”
“Poor social skills,” Neil acknowledged, wishing for O’Brien to move along with the story.
“A sad story. You’ve heard it a hundred times, though. The wife leaves, the man is devastated. Only this time the guy became a hermit, did it for his son, who couldn’t adapt to being around people. He was trying to help his son when something went wrong. There are all sorts of theories about what that was exactly, but no one really knows.” O’Brien sat up in the chair. “He requested, as far as I’ve heard the story — and the government complied — to remove everything possible about him from all records, including the internet, in case you think the government can’t do that. You can’t hide everything, of course, but they did their level best to make sure that he wasn’t visible. He wanted to be left alone with his research.”
“And what does that have to do with this?”
“Only that if anyone could create a thing like that, it would be Klein. I don’t even know if he’s still alive though. He’s got to be in his seventies or eighties.” O’Brien appeared to want to say something, but held back.
Neil didn’t have time for it. “There’s more. What is it?”
“Forgive me, but would you do that thing with your eyes? Like when you first arrived yesterday? I’d read about you, but never thought I’d ever have the chance to meet you. I’m just really curious.” He lowered his gaze for a moment. “I don’t mean to be rude, and you don’t have to, it’s just…”
“Not at all,” Neil said. He normally wouldn’t have humored the man, but O’Brien appeared as though he had to overcome quite a bit of fear just to make the request. Neil unlocked his eyes and let them wander separately. “Looks like a cartoon image of a crazy person doesn’t it?” Neil said with a little laugh. “Each eye rolling in opposite directions.
“You’re great,” O’Brien said. “This is really nice of you. So, tell me how this works. I mean, I know how it was done. I’ve read your parents’ work. But for you, how’s it feel? Is it odd?”
Neil had been asked that question so often that he felt no embarrassment about answering any more. He chose when to answer and when not to, but the embarrassment was gone. “It’s all I know. I’ve never been any different.”
“So, your right brain is in control of your left side,” O’Brien said, pointing his finger back and forth to indicate the two directions.
“Yes, I suppose biologically that’s how it works, but I don’t think of it that way. No matter what you might think, I can’t feel my brain any more than you can. So, to make it easy, I just consider it as though my left brain controls my left side. Not accurate, but it works for me.”
“So, when they severed the two halves of your brain, each side just took over and learned how to do everything itself, speech, motor control, everything? Like you have two brains.”
“Not that simple. My parents went through a lot of training with me. At first, I was pretty confused, as you can imagine. Mom was a psychiatrist. She worked it all out.” Neil recalled his formative years being very different. Being home-schooled is how his parents had kept it a secret for so long. Once found out, all hell broke loose for them. Those years were his worst. Regardless what the world thought about his parents, they were still his parents, and he was a normal eleven-year-old at the time.
Neil looked at his watch. The day was about over and he hadn’t eaten at all. And there was still Steffenbraun to interview.
“We could go on, but I know you’re wanting to wrap things up.” He pointed at Neil’s watch. “Perhaps some other time we could talk. Would that bother you?” O’Brien was very sincere.
“Another time,” Neil said. He didn’t know why he had suggested that he would talk with the bioengineer, but he did. For now, he’d leave it at that.
Neil got up. “Would you
mind letting Dr. Steffenbraun know that I’d like to interview him now? I’d like to talk with him before I leave so that I can get started first thing in the morning.”
“Not at all. I’ll let him know,” O’Brien said. “And thanks again for your understanding.”
Neil nodded then paced the small area between the conference room table and the doorway, eager for Steffenbraun to join him.
CHAPTER 10
FENNY WALKED into Dr. Klein’s bedroom and stood near the doctor. The overflow of data had settled once he focused on the doctor and not on the predicament. The man in the chair was obviously breathing. He was asleep. Fenny lowered his sound volume and said, “Dr. Klein, it has been several hours.” He reached out and took the book from the doctor’s lap. Noticing the title, he wondered who the difficult child might be, then made the logical connection. He felt a joyous confusion associated with the idea that Dr. Klein thought of him as a child, a living child.
He set the book on the dresser and reached his top hand out to poke the doctor in the arm.
Dr. Klein stirred and mumbled, then opened his eyes. “Fenny. What are you doing in here?”
“It has been several hours and you didn’t answer the door when I knocked. I was worried.” Fenny knew that the doctor would understand that “worried” only meant that his circuits were confused in a particular way, that Fenny explored his confusions and guessed at the right words based on the circumstances that he was in compared with similar circumstances he had read about in books. In the years they’d been together, worried had become a repetitive state and therefore an easy emotion to understand.
“You needn’t worry, my boy. I am a deep sleeper, deeper as I get older, I suppose. You may need to startle me awake from time to time because of it. But you did fine.” He lifted from the chair. “So sorry.”
Fenny placed in memory Dr. Klein’s words. He only purged such data when necessary. He compared sayings and looked up situations, anything to better assimilate what went on between the two of them. Because of this, Fenny felt sure of why the doctor had often called him “my boy.” There was no hiding the fact that Dr. Klein often thought of him as real. Fenny reached over and interlocked the fingers of his two hands. He enjoyed the sensation, the dual feedback from both banks of sensors interacting with one another. It was strange compared with direct feedback from only one set of sensors. He kept his fingers interlocked as he followed Dr. Klein into their workspace.
“I should have a sandwich,” Dr. Klein said.
“I’ll retrieve it for you,” Fenny volunteered.
“Good, good. Thank you.” He walked directly to the workbench. “I see you’ve connected the feet to the test equipment.” Dr. Klein bent over the workspace looking at the simulator, recorder, and oscilloscope alternately. He adjusted a few knobs and the toes of the foot wiggled. He laughed and shook his head. “Amazes me still to this day what science has been able to do.” He stood straight. “And I’ve been involved in a lot of it. Strange.”
Fenny watched as the doctor maneuvered the equipment and the feet into position so that the toes pointed toward where Fenny was microwaving a frozen sandwich into edible form.
“Watch this,” Dr. Klein said while pushing a button and allowing the toes to wiggle from one foot to the next in a waving frequency.
He laughed and Fenny felt joy.
“Can you imagine how these feet will feel?” He pointed at Fenny’s metal plates that acted as feet. “That reminds me. I need to record your reaction to your hands. Oh, I’m getting way ahead of myself. We have to study this a bit further before we take the next step. There it is, a pun, the next step.” He laughed and looked directly at Fenny. “I don’t want to overload that brain of yours,” he said.
“Please, no,” Fenny said. Then an entirely new and unusual thing happened inside Fenny’s neurogrid circuits that pushed through an additional audio signal. The sound was not a word, but a noise. He recognized the noise, but at first couldn’t label it.
Dr. Klein stopped abruptly and stared at Fenny. His face became very serious. “You laughed.” Then Dr. Klein smiled more broadly than Fenny had ever seen. “Your very first laugh. Fenny, you are beginning to socialize. How did you know to do that?”
“There was no knowing,” Fenny said. “My neurogrid circuits forced the sound through. I tried to make a word from it, but nothing came to mind. Had I known it was a laugh, I would have used ha-ha or ho-ho. Those are laugh sounds, aren’t they?”
“Those are how people write laugh sounds. And there are other ways, I’m sure, but the sound itself varies among people. This laugh was uniquely your own.” He walked over to Fenny. “I am very proud of you, my boy, very proud.”
Fenny’s confusion took a different turn and he averted his eyes. He recognized the reaction as embarrassment, but didn’t know why he should be embarrassed, or why he would feel that way. That would be something to research later. The other thing he thought to research a bit more was how, and perhaps why, his neurogrid was taking on control without going through a reasoning process first.
He opened the microwave and removed the plate with Dr. Klein’s sandwich. Fenny couldn’t help but register the temperature change inside the oven. His fingers were warmer than his hand. “Your sandwich, Doctor. You should eat it now while it is warm.” He held the plate out for Dr. Klein to take.
“Good idea.” He patted Fenny’s torso, but Fenny couldn’t feel anything but a slight pressure on his knee and ankle joints and a tiny vibration in the heel of his hands.
While Dr. Klein sat on a stool near the workbench and ate his sandwich, Fenny automatically retrieved a glass of water from the kitchen and the man’s blood pressure pills.
“Yes, thank you for reminding me.” Dr. Klein swallowed his pill and drank nearly half the glass of water. “I’m always thirsty when I wake up,” he said.
Fenny lowered onto his legs until his torso couldn’t go any farther and then rested there. “Do you think of me as a boy?”
Dr. Klein paused for a second then went back to chewing his sandwich. “Mmmm.” He held up one finger until he swallowed. “I’ll tell you the truth, Fenny. I do sometimes think of you that way, even though you are mechanical and electrical in nature. You are acting more and more like a human. Like your laugh a few minutes ago. The neurogrid circuits simulate the human brain. But they are not biological. You are not biological.”
Fenny’s circuits shot through with data that shifted and came at him from what felt like several directions. Again, his neurogrid forced a signal through his logic circuits and his leg mechanisms reacted with motion. He could only label the activity as a little jump as he stood. His eyes swung around also. “But you are only mechanical and electrical,” he snapped. Even Fenny recognized the adjusted tone in his vocal response.
Dr. Klein stared at Fenny for a long moment. “And biological,” he said. “In due time you will be the same. Or as close as I can get. But there are other tests, other components, to try out.” He set the sandwich plate on the bench top next to one of the feet. “I can see that you are eager to move forward, but this must be done with care.” He lowered his face so that his eyes peered over the top of his glasses. “Do you understand? I have only your best interests in mind.” He nodded as though leading Fenny into agreement with him.
Fenny was ready. He had integrated the hands perfectly. Sure, there were other textures, combinations of pressures and temperatures that he could experience and document until Dr. Klein was too old to document any longer. But that was experience that he could accumulate over time. He not only understood the circuitry, he had tested every last primary sensor, had sensed how they interacted. He knew the pleasures of having hands, and now he wanted feet. He wanted them with all his being. But he knew from past situations that Dr. Klein progressed at his own pace. This time it was much too slow for Fenny, but he would abide by the doctor’s rules for now. Fenny performed a common maneuver that he’d read about in almost every novel, and that he had expe
rienced firsthand through Dr. Klein, he changed the subject. Advancing the conversation would not have gotten him any closer to a change in Dr. Klein’s mind. He reached for the plate with the last of the sandwich on it, then stopped short. “Are you finished?”
“I’m good, yes. Just…” Dr. Klein picked up the glass of water and drained it then handed it to Fenny’s short arm.
The glass was cool where the plate was still warm. Fenny registered the sensations in his two hands simultaneously. He walked into the kitchen and put the rest of the sandwich into the trash and placed the dishes into the nearly full dishwasher. Fenny clasped his hands together. The motion appeared to release what he thought of as anxiety, his neurogrid reaction to the conversation he had completed with Dr. Klein. He hesitated before wandering back into the working area of the house.
“I need to do some additional tests,” Dr. Klein said.
Fenny approached the workbench and reached around to open the side panel to the array of interface plugs that were available. He had never been able to open the door on his own before because the rotating knob that kept it closed was smooth and round. It had a gnarled surface, but Fenny’s mechanical grippers were metal and slid over the area no matter how much pressure he used. The fingers on the hand, though, allowed the gnarled surface to integrate with the pliable synthetic material. Essentially, he could grip the knob and turn it. The idea was thrilling that he now had access to his own input/output connections. If he could have smiled, he would have done so.
Dr. Klein didn’t miss this new ability of Fenny’s. He pointed to the open door and said, “That could be dangerous.”
“How so,” Fenny asked.
“You have been taking initiatives lately that are not conducive to our safety.” He tapped Fenny’s torso. “It’s not your fault. You were making logical decisions, at least to you, but we can’t have you overriding circuits by accident, or interconnecting things you shouldn’t be.”
“I have learned my lesson. The situation this morning frightened me.” He wasn’t sure of the connection between what happened and what should have happened and what could have happened, but he tried it out on the doctor anyway.