by Bart Kosko
The master chip could easily process the billion billion bits of data per second that John’s brain did. It could also store vastly more bits than could the three pounds of meat that until now had housed the patterns of John’s mind. The master chip sat wedged in a solid metal casing that stored its nanobattery pack.
John lost much of his consciousness even as the chiplets made his mind stronger and faster. He had deduced that the buzzing came from the new units as they tuned themselves and fell into new patterns of resonance with their neighbors. But then that deduction had slipped away and he could not retrieve it.
Now the master chip came to life a unit at a time. The first golden chiplet transferred its contents to the master chip and slowly turned itself off. John did not detect the transfer or notice any change in his dazed consciousness. Then the second chiplet transferred its contents and slowly turned itself off.
Soon the master chip controlled more than half of John’s brain function. The patterns of John’s mind had transferred smoothly from meat to chiplet net to master chip. The mind symphony still played but a new orchestra played it.
Moshe plucked away each chiplet as it shut off.
John just watched the memories flood past and yet felt his control grow over his memories.
He recalled the trivial neural math he had learned at UNLV. He recalled the parts he had used and changed in his thesis and how important he had felt those changes were. Sometimes he had vivid flashes of these past events. He could recall them in full color and make people say things he knew they had not said. He saw complete math derivations without having to work through them a line at a time.
Sometimes he heard Eytan talking to the Israelis.
Most of the talk was in English. Some was in Hebrew and somehow he even seemed to understand it. John learned in this lucid dream state that Aaron had found Denise’s body and scooped out the spine and brainstem grafts. Those parts of her neural chassis were with him right now on the van. Eytan spoke of this as the key breakthrough.
John knew that they now worked to implant her grafts in him. Her grafts would connect his chip mind to his old meat body.
Then hours and days and months seemed to scrunch up and compress as if the timeline were part of a rubber band. He was aware of time but not space. There were no images in his mind’s eye. No event flowed from one to the next. There was no framework of cause and effect. There was only the empty void of time.
A great deal of time seemed to pass before it all came to an end. John could not tell though he had remained awake. It could have been hours or days or even weeks. He could not gauge the time gaps between events.
Eytan stood before him grinning without the white face mask.
John glanced down at his arms and legs and saw that they were free.
“Not bad for a field dressing,” Eytan said. “This is our first. And you are still you. Aren’t you? You never lost consciousness. And yet you’re something else now. Here. You should keep this for old time’s sake.”
Eytan held out a large pickle jar.
John could see his many pink brain chunks floating in the yellow formaldehyde. He reached slowly for the jar but Eytan set it down on the floor near his feet.
“Mind over matter,” Eytan said. “You’re living proof of that and it just might change the world. But right now you really do need to get some sleep. We still have to replace that right eye with a far better one and tune it. Moshe. How the hell does he sleep?”
“Open like this we can just turn off the outer cortex modules in the master chip. It won’t affect his breathing or heart rate.”
“Fine. Then turn them off.”
John wanted to say something to Eytan. He also wanted to reach out and take the electric scalpel off the side table and cut out one of Eytan’s eyes with it. Eytan knew all about taking an eye for an eye.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Eytan said with a wink. “Can’t blame you either. It’s a hell of a thing to be governed.”
Uri waved the nanografter over the old chiplets on the tray. That was their final shut-off signal. It also told the master chip which final port units to shut off.
John jerked slightly as if he had tripped in a dream.
He collapsed in such a state of complete muscle relaxation that he wet himself.
Eytan put his hands on his hips.
“Moshe. Now I’m worred about possible infection. You’re not going to pop out his eye with your fingers?”
“No sir. With this.”
Moshe held up a common spoon.
“Ah. In the field we improvise.”
Chapter 39
Baku
Azerbaijan
General Mosarian walked to the electric map of the Caspian Sea.
“Change it,” he said. “Bring up the strike path to Tel Aviv.”
“From where?” Firouz said.
“From Baku. Where else?”
Colonel Mohammed Firouz entered the code on the computer and watched the screen change. The red lines grew from Baku and crossed Iran and Iraq. Then the red lines passed through Syria to Tel Aviv.
The murder of President Aminzadeh had outraged Firouz as it had outraged all the men in the Azer army. Firouz had backed the oil ban against the Israelis. He had not backed Mosarian when he bombed Parliament and declared himself the acting president of Azerbaijan.
But Firouz had sworn to obey his leaders. Now Mosarian would hold him to his oath. And Firouz knew his men watched him. All he had to do was draw his Beretta and stop the tyrant before he truly took power. No one wanted to live under this man’s martial law.
Mosarian had already put his pistol to the back of the head of Captain Bavarian. Firouz had not seen it but one of his men had. Mosarian claimed that Bavarian had leaked state secrets to an Azer gangster who dealt with the Israelis. Firouz knew Bavarian and knew that had to be a lie. Mosarian had murdered Bavarian to hide something.
And he still had to obey the tyrant.
“Estimated time for missile trajectory?” Mosarian said.
“Almost two hours in deep-stealth mode.”
“Very well. Launch.”
Firouz grinned and Mosarian grinned back at him.
Firouz had taken orders from Mosarian for over 20 years. He had watched Mosarian rise from colonel to general. He had watched him coddle his bosses and the politicians. He had watched him ruin or end the careers of those beneath him who did not support him. Bavarian was just the latest in a long line of corpses. Firouz had drunk Tennessee bourbon and Ukrainian vodka at Mosarian’s estate on the Caspian. He had drunk fine Italian champagne with him and his mistresses at the local nightclubs.
But he knew now that none of it mattered.
Mosarian would have him shot on the spot if he did not obey him. Firouz always knew it would come to this and now it had.
“Atef,” Firouz said. “I wish it were that easy. You have seen the simulations. The cruise missiles would never make it across Iranian air space. The Iranians would shoot them down and then launch against us.”
“That was once true,” Mosarian said. “The Israelis changed that. The Iranian government has authorized our use of their airspace for this strike.”
“You are serious?”
“I am.”
“But what of Iraq and Syria? The flight path is almost a thousand miles.”
“The Iranians have air agreements with the Iraqis and the Syrians. We have their permission. They will let us pass.”
“General. This could provoke war with the Israelis.”
“Killing our President provoked war with us. Do what I say. I really don’t think the Israelis will send many troops here! This is only justice and the people demand it. Start the launch sequence.”
Firouz stood up from the command console.
He saw now the difference between Mosarian and him. Mosarian had killed men and he had not. That was the difference. Mosarian would not hesitate to kill and he would. He could still draw the Beretta and end this
nonsense before it brought ruin on his country and on him. But his hand would not move for the gun and he had run out of things to say. He hesitated.
Mosarian drew his Beretta.
“Mohammed. You will start the launch sequence or I will shoot you for treason. Sit down and do what I say. I am in full command now of the country as well as the army. Sit down!”
Firouz started to move his right hand to his own Beretta but he froze. He still could not do it.
Mosarian fired three times and Firouz crumpled to the floor.
Firouz heard shouting and felt someone kick him. Then he felt the scraping pain in his side. He saw someone in his seat but could not tell who it was. The lights changed colors in the room and more people screamed and even cheered.
Firouz sat up and saw the holes in his side and saw the red launch mode of the command screen. The red patterns swirled in his mind and yet he saw what had happened. Mosarian had forced the launch sequence from one of his own men. Now he was dying in vain and no one helped him.
The dizziness made him lie back on the floor.
“Mohammed. Mohammed.”
Firouz opened his eyes and saw the wide unshaven face of Mosarian. He smelled the sweat that came from stress and a dislike of bathing.
“You fool,” the face said. “Why did you disobey me?”
“My sons,” Firouz tried to say.
“Don’t worry. The army will take care of my old friend.”
Firouz felt a fresh presence of mind as he saw Mosarian draw his pistol again. He knew it would be better this way. The pain was like fire now in his chest and his leg. He did not want to look at his leg.
He rolled to his right and felt his own Beretta.
Somehow the fingers of his good right hand unsnapped the black leather holster and squeezed the wooden butt. He finished the roll and saw Mosarian aiming at him. Firouz found the trigger and moved his index finger around it.
Then he shot the old bastard in the stomach.
Firouz saw the black hole it made in Mosarian’s green fatigues. Then he felt the fire hit him in his neck.
Mosarian cupped his stomach with his left hand as he emptied the nine-millimeter into the dead man.
Chapter 40
Mojave Desert
Nevada
John Grant woke in a rolling mind ache.
His eyes opened but he could not control his stereo vision. At first double blobs moved and crossed before they became one. Then John could see Eytan as he leaned back in the old worn armchair and smoked a thin cigar. But John could not tell how close Eytan was to him. The cigar smoke also seemed far more pungent than any smoke he had ever smelled.
John closed his eyes to quell the nausea growing in his stomach. Then he slowly opened them and tried again to focus on Eytan. The nausea returned.
This time John closed his left eye and strained to see with his new right eye. He knew he should be in a great deal of pain but the pain was not there. He felt only the sickness bubbling in his stomach. His right eye saw a finer and brighter image of the room than his left eye had seen.
John looked at the green carpet on the floor and the dark reddish-brown cherry wood that covered the walls and ceiling. He knew where he was. Eytan had brought him home to his underground trailer in the Mojave Desert.
John once more looked at Eytan with his right eye and tried to focus on Eytan’s face. His eye seemed to telescope and leap out of his head. It zoomed in on Eytan’s lined face. Then his new right eye zoomed in deeper on Eytan’s light blue left eye. Then it zoomed in deeper still to the bloody veins that crisscrossed Eytan’s retina.
John did not have to squeeze his facial muscles to control the zoom. He had only to think about zooming in and the eye obeyed his will. He zoomed further and saw a gray layer of fluid and in it he saw the chaotic froth of molecules in a Brownian motion. John relaxed and blinked and Eytan returned to normal view.
He opened his left eye but still could not make it match the new right eye.
“Good,” Eytan said. “You’re back. I have been shooting you with norepinephrine to wake you up. Time is tight. I want you to try something. Say the word ‘menu’ to yourself three times.”
John did not argue or ask what time it was. He did not ask Eytan if they had really carved out pieces of his brain and replaced it with a master chip. He still tried to right himself from the rolling and swaying of his head.
“Go ahead. Say the word ‘menu’ three times. Try it.”
John said the word to himself.
Eytan could see his throat muscles moving.
The third ‘menu’ opened a wall of windows in John’s mind’s eye. He could see the windows and study their colors and captions. But they were not in his visual field of view. He still saw Eytan smoking the cigar. Yet he saw the windows in full 3-D color.
The Israelis had given him a new mind’s eye of structured hypertext.
“It’s all about attention,” Eytan said. “We all have searchlights in our thalamuses to focus our attention. A few thousand brain cells line up and oscillate at the same frequency or something like that. They tell me you have one main searchlight and hundreds of lesser ones. Remember those old magazine racks in drugstores? Remember the titty magazines and the ones with cars and muscle men on the cover? You could read them all at once if you stood back far enough to see them. You now sense as well as process in parallel.”
John heard Eytan and understood him but could see no reason to care about him or what he said.
The cigar smoke also seemed to get in the way and did not lose its pungent smell. John wondered if the neural ganglia in his olfactory bulb had grown used to the smell or if he now processed those signals in the cortex part of his chip. It was just a thought. It had no more merit than had his thoughts of the reddish-brown cherry wood or his thoughts of the dried skin on the back of Eytan’s hands or his thoughts of the strange way his right eye worked. He was thinking again and that was what mattered.
John sat back behind the eyes he had always sat behind. There was no more to it than that. He was not just thinking. He was the thinking and had always been just the thinking.
“Now pay attention,” Eytan said. “You have to learn how to open windows. All you have to do is think about the window you want to open. That should bring it up. Look at it in your mind’s eye and then say ‘click’ to yourself. Really you can say anything but try ‘click.’ Okay? Let’s try it. Think of the desalination plant in Eilat. You’ve been there. Think what it looked like before the bombing.”
It came to John from nowhere.
The blue window eilat desalination plant hovered to the left of his visual field of view. John looked at it and on past it to the cylinder that seemed to collapse to infinity at one end. He found that he could look at Eytan and the blue window and the cylinder at the same time and focus on each at its own pace. Now the cylinder looked more like a twisting vortex with thousands of large and small windows on its walls.
John had a sudden insight. It was a thought about the structure of his thoughts.
His mind was not just a disembodied cloud in space. His mind was a type of curved surface. The swirling tornado was the central feature of that surface and thus of his mind and of him. Yet he could not just look at the vortex from any direction and see the same thing.
The curvature changed the result. His mind seemed to be the curvature itself.
Each thought traced out a curved mind path on the surface. He could follow a mind path in a closed loop. But when he closed the loop and got back to where he had started his mind had changed slightly in the process. He saw that even the curvature of the surface could change slightly. He saw this while he watched Eytan and kept the blue window and the tornado squarely in front of his mind’s eye.
Just then a flood of ideas rushed at John from the surface. But Eytan would not give him the time or the peace to pursue them.
“John. Think of the desalination plant. See it?”
“Yes,” John said in a d
eeper voice than he recalled having.
“Good. You sound a little hoarse but fine. Now say ‘click’ to open the window. What does it say?”
“It says ‘load files.’ ”
“That’s it. I will load all the files you need for the demo into that port. You’ll go to chip time but don’t panic. It will be one hell of a rush.”
Chapter 41
Riyadh
Saudi Arabia
“I don’t believe it,” Haddad said. “The Azers are attacking Iran? Never. They must be aiming at Israel. But the Iranians will shoot them down.”
Commander Haddad watched the missile tracks on the green wall map in the Saudi Air Command at Riyadh. The Americans had confirmed the missiles’ radar signatures.
CIA satellites had seen the thin exhaust plumes through the stealth shields. The Americans had sold the Azers much of their air-defense system and had no trouble spying on it from above and sometimes from within. That was not the source of Haddad’s disbelief. He knew that no one could hide a missile launch in the modern world. The smart eyes saw all.
“Inform the palace,” Haddad told his aide.
“Sir,” Major Jabor said. “A slight trajectory deviation. The missiles have turned away from Tehran.”
“So they are trying to hit Israel. They will never make it across Iranian airspace.”
But Haddad and his staff did watch them pass slowly over Iran and into Iraq. He had been wrong again and was glad he had not briefed King Fahd on the strike.
Haddad also felt as if he might be the cause of this futile but symbolic strike.
He had proposed that the Saudis strike Eilat. Maybe the king was not as intent on using force as he had thought. Maybe the Israelis really had not sponsored the Greens. Or maybe the Greens had not bombed Dhahran. Or maybe he had bombed Eilat out of his own fear of looking weak to the Sunni matawwa religious police.
It was too late to know. The world had always been a highly nonlinear system. Each day the causal webs seemed to grow denser and react faster. Only Allah could see how the past led to the future in the great fluid of atoms and bits that made up the modern world.