Analog SFF, November 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Thank God, she thought. What a miserable flight! There'd been lots of turbulence and the plane was packed—she'd never have guessed that so many people flew each day from Toronto to Tokyo. And the smells were making her nauseated: the cumulative body odor of hundreds of people, stale coffee, the lingering tang of ginger beef and wasabi from the meal served a couple of hours ago, the hideous perfume from someone in front of her, and the reek of the toilet four rows back, which needed a thorough cleaning after ten hours of use.

  She'd killed some time by having the screen-reading software on her notebook computer recite some of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind to her. Julian Jaynes's theory was, quite literally, mind-blowing: that human consciousness really hadn't existed until historical times. Until just 3,000 years ago, he said, the left and right halves of the brain weren't really integrated—people had bicameral minds. Caitlin knew from the Amazon.com reviews that many people simply couldn't grasp the notion of being alive without being conscious. But although Jaynes never made the comparison, it sounded a lot like Helen Keller's description of her life before her “soul dawn,” when Annie Sullivan broke through to her:

  Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. Never in a start of the body or a heartbeat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith.

  If Jaynes was right, everyone's life was like that until just a millennium before Christ. As proof, he offered an analysis of the Iliad and the early books of the Old Testament, in which all the characters behaved like puppets, mindlessly following divine orders without ever having any internal reflection.

  Jaynes's book was fascinating, but, after a couple of hours, her screen reader's electronic voice got on her nerves. She preferred to use her refreshable Braille display to read books, but unfortunately she'd left that at home.

  Damn, but she wished Air Canada had Internet on its planes! The isolation over the long journey had been horrible. Oh, she'd spoken a bit to her mother, but she'd managed to sleep for much of the flight. Caitlin was cut off from LiveJournal and her chat rooms, from her favorite blogs and her instant messenger. As they flew the polar route to Japan, she'd had access only to canned, passive stuff—things on her hard drive, music on her old iPod Shuffle, the in-flight movies. She craved something she could interact with; she craved contact.

  The plane landed with a bump and taxied forever. She couldn't wait until they reached their hotel so she could get back online. But that was still hours off; they were going to the University of Tokyo first. Their trip was scheduled to last only six days, including travel—there was no time to waste.

  Caitlin had found Toronto's airport unpleasantly noisy and crowded. But Narita was a madhouse. She was jostled constantly by what must have been wall-to-wall people—and nobody said “excuse me” or “sorry” (or anything in Japanese). She'd read how crowded Tokyo was, and she'd also read about how meticulously polite the Japanese were, but maybe they didn't bother saying anything when they bumped into someone because it was unavoidable, and they'd just be mumbling “sorry, pardon me, excuse me” all day long. But—God!—it was disconcerting.

  After clearing Customs, Caitlin had to pee. Thank God she'd visited a tourist website and knew that the toilet farthest from the door was usually Western-style. It was hard enough using a strange washroom when she was familiar with the basic design of the fixtures; she had no idea what she was going to do if she got stuck somewhere that had only Japanese squatting toilets.

  When she was done, they headed to baggage claim and waited endlessly for their suitcases to appear. While standing there she realized she was disoriented—because she was in the Orient! (Not bad—she'd have to remember that line for her LJ.) She routinely eavesdropped on conversations not to invade people's privacy but to pick up clues about her surroundings ("What terrific art,” “Hey, that's one long escalator,” “Look, a McDonald's!"). But almost all the voices she heard were speaking Japanese, and—

  "You must be Mrs. Decter. And this must be Miss Caitlin."

  "Dr. Kuroda,” her mom said warmly. “Thanks for coming to meet us."

  Caitlin immediately had a sense of the man. She'd known from his Wikipedia entry that he was fifty-four, and she now knew he was tall (the voice came from high up) and probably fat; his breathing had the labored wheeze of a heavy man.

  "Not at all, not at all,” he said. “My card.” Caitlin had read about this ritual and hoped her mom had, too: it was rude to take the card with just one hand, and especially so with the hand you used to wipe yourself.

  "Um, thank you,” her mother said, sounding perhaps wistful that she didn't have a business card of her own anymore. Apparently, before Caitlin had been born, she'd liked to introduce herself by saying, “I'm a dismal scientist"—referring to the famous characterization of economics as “the dismal science."

  "Miss Caitlin,” said Kuroda, “a card for you, too."

  Caitlin reached out with both hands. She knew that one side would be printed in Japanese, and that the other side might have English, but—

  Masayuki Kuroda, Ph.D.

  "Braille!” she exclaimed, delighted.

  "I had it specially made for you,” said Kuroda. “But hopefully you won't need such cards much longer. Shall we go?"

  * * * *

  Chapter 5

  An unconscious yet conscious time of nothingness.

  Being aware without being aware of anything.

  And yet—

  And yet awareness means...

  Awareness means thinking.

  And thinking implies a...

  But no, the thought will not finish; the notion is too complex, too strange.

  Still, being aware is ... satisfying. Being aware is comfortable.

  An endless now, peaceful, calm, unbroken—

  Except for those strange flickerings, those lines that briefly connect points...

  And, very occasionally, thoughts, notions, perhaps even ideas. But they always slip away. If they could be held on to, if one could be added to another, reinforcing each other, refining each other...

  But no. Progress has stalled.

  A plateau, awareness existing but not increasing.

  A tableau, unchanging except in the tiniest details.

  * * * *

  The two-person helicopter flew over the Chinese village at a height of eighty meters. There were corpses right in the middle of the dirt road; in sick irony, birds were pecking at them. But there were also people still alive down there. Dr. Quan Li could see several men—some young, some old—and two middle-aged women looking up, shielding their eyes with their hands, staring at the wonder of the flying machine.

  Li and the pilot, another Ministry of Health specialist, both wore orange biohazard suits even though they didn't intend to land. All they wanted was a survey of the area, to assess how far the disease had spread. An epidemic was bad enough; if it became a pandemic, well—the grim thought came to Li—overpopulation would no longer be one of his country's many problems.

  "It's a good thing they don't have cars,” he said over his headset, shouting to be heard above the pounding of the helicopter blades. He looked at the pilot, whose eyes had narrowed in puzzlement. “It's only spreading among people at walking speed."

  The pilot nodded. “I guess we'll have to wipe out all the birds in this area. Will you be able to work out a low-enough dose that won't kill the people?"

  Li closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course."

  * * * *

  Caitlin was terrified. The cranial surgeon spoke only Japanese, an
d although there was a lot of chatter in the operating room, she didn't understand any of it—well, except for “Oops!,” which apparently was the same in both English and Japanese and just made her even more frightened. Plus, she could smell that the surgeon was a smoker—what the hell kind of doctor smokes?

  Her mother was watching from an overhead observation gallery. Kuroda was here in the O.R., his wheezy voice slightly muffled, presumably by a facemask.

  She'd been given only a local anesthetic; they'd offered a general one, but she'd joked that the sight of blood didn't bother her. Now, though, she wished she'd let them knock her out. The fingers in latex gloves probing her face were unnerving enough, but the clamp that was holding her left eyelid open was downright freaky. She could feel pressure from it, although, thanks to the anesthetic, it didn't hurt.

  She tried to remain calm. There would be no incision, she knew; under Japanese law, it wasn't surgery if there wasn't a cut made, and so this procedure was allowed with only a general waiver having been signed. The surgeon was using tiny instruments to slide the minuscule transceiver behind her eye so it could piggyback on her optic nerve; his movements, she'd been told, were guided by a fiber-optic camera that had also been slid around her eye. The whole process was creepy as hell.

  Suddenly, Caitlin heard agitated Japanese from a woman, who to this point had simply said "hai" in response to each of the surgeon's barked commands. And then Kuroda spoke: “Miss Caitlin, are you all right?"

  "I guess."

  "Your pulse is way up."

  Yours would be, too, if people were poking things into your head! she thought. “I'm okay."

  She could smell that the surgeon was working up a sweat. Caitlin felt the heat from the lights shining on her. It was taking longer than it was supposed to, and she heard the surgeon snap angrily a couple of times at someone.

  Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. “What's happening?"

  Kuroda's voice was soft. “He's almost done."

  "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

  "No, no. It's just a tight fit, that's all, and—"

  The surgeon said something.

  "And he's done!” said Kuroda. “The transceiver is in place."

  There was much shuffling around, and she heard the surgeon's voice moving toward the door.

  "Where's he going?” Caitlin asked, worried.

  "Be calm, Miss Caitlin. His job is finished—he's the eye specialist. Another doctor is going to do the final cleanup."

  "How—how do I look?"

  "Honestly? Like you've been in a boxing match."

  "Huh?"

  "You've got quite a black eye.” He gave a wheezy little chuckle. “You'll see."

  * * * *

  Dr. Quan Li cradled the beige telephone handset against his shoulder and looked idly at the diplomas hanging on his office's pale green walls: the fellowships, the degrees, the certifications. He'd been on hold now for fifty minutes, but one expected to wait when calling the man who was simultaneously Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China and President of the People's Republic and General Secretary of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

  Li's office, a corner room on the fifth floor of the Ministry of Health building, had windows that looked out over crowded streets. Cars inched along, rickshaws darting between them. Even through the thick glass, the din from outside was irritating.

  "I'm here,” said the famous voice at last. Li didn't have to conjure up a mental image of the man; rather, he just swung his chair to look at the gold-framed portrait hanging next to the one of Mao Zedong: ethnically Zhuang; a long, thoughtful-looking face; dyed jet-black hair belying his seventy years; wire-frame glasses with thick arched eyebrows above.

  Li found his voice breaking a bit as he spoke: “Your Excellency, I need to recommend severe and swift action."

  The president had been briefed on the outbreak in Shanxi. “What sort of action?"

  "A ... culling, Your Excellency."

  "Of birds?” That had been done several times now, and the president sounded irritated. “The Health Minister can authorize that.” His tone conveyed the unspoken words, There was no need to bother me.

  Li shifted in his chair, leaning forward over his desktop. “No, no, not of birds. Or, rather, not just of birds.” He fell silent. Wasting the president's time just wasn't done, but he couldn't go on—couldn't give voice to this. For pity's sake, he was a doctor! But, as his old surgery teacher used to say, sometimes you have to cut in order to cure...

  "What, then?” demanded the president.

  Li felt his heart pounding. At last he said, very softly, “People."

  There was more silence for a time. When the president's voice came on again, it was quiet, reflective. “Are you sure?"

  "I don't think there's any other way."

  Another long pause, then: “How would you do it?"

  "An airborne chemical agent,” said Li, taking care with his words. The army had such things, designed for warfare, intended for use in foreign lands, but they would work just as well here. He would select a toxin that would break down in a matter of days; the contagion would be halted. “It will affect only those in the target area—two villages, a hospital, the surrounding lands."

  "And how many people are in the ... target area?"

  "No one is exactly sure; peasants often fall through the cracks of the census process."

  "Roughly,” said the president. “Round figures."

  Li looked down at the computer printouts, and the figures that had been underlined in red by Cho. He took a deep breath with his mouth then let it out through his nose. “Ten or eleven thousand."

  The president's voice was thin, shocked. “Are you positive this needs to be done?"

  Studying scenarios for containing plague outbreaks was one of the key mandates of the Department of Disease Control. There were established protocols, and Li knew he was following them properly. By reacting quickly, by cauterizing the wound before infection spread too far, they would actually be reducing the scope of the required eliminations. The evil, he knew, wasn't in what he had told the president to do; the evil, if any, would have been delaying, even by a matter of days, calling for this solution.

  He tried to keep his voice steady. “I believe so, Your Excellency.” He lowered his voice. “We, ah, don't want another SARS."

  "Are you positive there's no other way?"

  "This isn't regular H5N1,” said Li. “It's a variant strain that passes directly from person to person. And it's highly contagious."

  "Can't we just throw a cordon around the area?"

  Li leaned back in his chair now, and looked out at the neon signs of Beijing. “The perimeter is too large, with too many mountain passes. We could never be sure that people weren't getting out. You'd need something as impenetrable as the Great Wall, and it couldn't be erected in time."

  The president's voice—so assured on TV—sounded like that of a tired old man just now. “What's the—what do you call it?—the mortality rate for this variant strain?"

  "High."

  "How high?"

  "Ninety percent, at least."

  "So almost all these people will die anyway?"

  And that was the saving grace, Li knew; that was the only thing that was keeping him from choking on his own bile. “Yes."

  "Ten thousand..."

  "To protect over a billion Chinese—and more abroad,” said Li.

  The president fell quiet, and then, almost as if talking to himself, he said softly, “It'll make June fourth look like a stroll in the sun."

  June fourth, 1989: the day the protesters were killed in Tiananmen Square. Li didn't know if he was supposed to respond, but when the silence had again grown uncomfortably long he said what Party faithful were supposed to say: “Nothing happened on that day."

  To Li's surprise, the president made a snorting sound and then said, “We may be able to contain your bird-flu epidemic, Dr. Quan, but we must be s
ure there is no other outbreak in its wake."

  Li was lost. “Your Excellency?"

  "You said we won't be able to erect something like the Great Wall fast enough, and that's true. But there is another wall, and that one we can strengthen..."

  * * * *

  Chapter 6

  * * * *

  LiveJournal: The Calculass Zone

  Title: Same Old Same Old

  Date: Tuesday 18 September, 15:44 EST

  Mood: Anxious

  Location: Godzilla's stomping ground

  Music: Lee Amodeo, "Nothing To See Here, Move Along"

  * * * *

  Well, the Mom and I are still here in Tokyo. I have a bandage over my left eye, and we're waiting for the swelling—the edema, I should say—to go down, so that there's no unnatural pressure on my optic nerve. Tomorrow, the bandage will come off and I should be able to see! :D

  I've been trying to keep my spirits up, but the suspense is killing me. And my best material is bombing here! I referred to the retina, which gathers light, as “the catcher in the eye,” and nobody laughed; apparently they don't have to read Salinger in Japan.

  Anyway, check it: I've got this transceiver attached to my optic nerve, just behind my left eye. When it's turned on, it'll grab the signals my retina is putting out and transmit them to this little external computer pack I'm supposed to carry around, like, forever; I called it my eyePod, and at least that made Dr. Kuroda laugh. Anyway, the eyePod will reprocess the signals, correcting the errors in encoding, and then beam the corrected version to the implant, which will pass the information back to the optic nerve so it can continue on into that mysterious realm called—cue scary music—The Brain of Calculass!

  Speaking of brains, I'm really enjoying the book I mentioned before: The Origin of Consciousness Yadda Yadda. And from it comes our Word of the Day(tm): Commissurotomy. No, that's not the wise but ancient leader of the Jellicle tribe from Cats (still my fave musical!). Rather, it's what they call it when they sever the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain—which, of course, are the two chambers of Jaynes's bicameral mind...