by K McConnell
The Master Switch
K McConnell
Copyright 2015 K McConnell
Other titles by K McConnell:
To Not Be In Hamlet (Hamlet Mystery Series, Book 1)
The Art of Hamlet (Hamlet Mystery Series, Book 2)
A Conspiracy in Blood
Symbiotic Puppets
The Plague
The Club of the Bombastic Few
Website: https://www.HamletMysteries.com
mailto: [email protected]
The Master Switch
Jason Brentwood pulled the car into a parking spot in front of the white two story building. A line of windows wrapped around the two floors. He had never been to this facility before. It was just one of the many funded research labs of the Twinsom Group. He was in his mid-thirties, clean-cut, sandy blonde hair and, despite feeling like an impressive representative of the Twinsom Group in his gray tailored suit, he was uncertain what kind of welcome he would receive from Dr. Grover.
The powers that be at the Twinsom Group were growing increasingly concerned at not hearing from Dr. Grover for nearly two months. After two years of a steady stream of emails, conference calls and the like, suddenly, nothing. Unanswered emails and phone messages from the Twinsom Group had led to Jason’s arrival. His job: an update, some answers, some kind of status report on what was going on.
Jason pulled the large glass door open and walked into the white tiled, white walled spacious lobby. A receptionist stationed at a wide desk in the middle of the room spotted him and leaped up. She nearly ran over to him. They were expecting him.
“Are you Mr. Brentwood? Are you? Huh? Huh?” she asked excitedly.
Jason hesitated. The woman’s excitement took him slightly aback. She was very close to him---a bit over the line in terms of personal space. For a moment he almost thought she was going to kiss him.
“Mr. Brentwood.” The voice came from a man just emerging from the elevators located behind the receptionist’s desk. The man was taller, black hair, goatee, mustache and a blue suit. He hurried over and shouldered aside the receptionist.
“That will be all Miss Denning.” He dismissed the receptionist. “Hello, Mr. Brentwood. My name is Dr. Haverton. I am the Assistant Director of the facility. Dr. Grover sends his apologies, but he was called away on an urgent matter. I am, however, completely at your disposal.”
Jason shook the offered hand. “Uh, thank you, doctor.”
“Can I get you something? Water? A bowl of something?” The receptionist had danced around Haverton and was up close to Jason again.
“That will be all, Miss Denning. Now, go.” Haverton pointed back towards the receptionist’s desk.
Miss Denning seemed to hunch over somewhat and scurry back behind her desk.
“Well, Dr. Haverton,” Jason began, “I hope you don’t find my visit too much of an inconvenience, but Dr. Grover’s last status reports mentioned something about a breakthrough and everyone at the Twinsom Group is very excited to hear about it.” Jason mentally patted himself on the back for his diplomacy in getting right down to business.
“Yes,” Haverton hesitated, “there has been something of a breakthrough and…I will explain everything to you shortly. Why don’t we go up to the conference room where it’s more comfortable.” Haverton turned, leading Jason back towards the elevators.
As the elevator doors closed behind them Haverton turned to Jason. “So, how much do you know about our work here?”
“Well, I understand that you are working on a 3 dimensional map of brain usage. In particular, those areas of the brain that are used for higher thought processes such as abstract thinking and reasoning. According to the last reports I have read you were still in the initial phase of mapping animal brains to provide a baseline for identifying abstract thought in the human brain.”
Haverton nodded as they walked along a hallway on the second floor. Windows ran along the length of the hall.
“Very good. Yes, that is essentially our mission here.” Haverton said.
They passed two guys, casually dressed, staring out a window along the hall. They seemed to be anxiously staring down at something along the side of the building.
“Are you sure you saw it?” one man asked.
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure of it. It was a cat!” the second man responded.
“Where did it go? Which way?” the first man asked excitedly.
“That way, I think. Over there somewhere.” The second man answered.
Haverton gave the two men a hard look as he passed and they slowly tore themselves away from the window, moving sullenly back down the hall.
“Did you lose a test animal?” Jason asked.
“No.” Haverton answered quietly as he glanced back down the hall. “We have not lost a single animal from this facility.”
They reached a door and Haverton led Jason into the conference room. The far wall of the conference room comprised of windows that looked out across a room of cubicles. Jason saw the heads of different people constantly popping up over the tops of the cubicle walls, look around and drop back out of sight.
“Please have a seat.” Haverton said, with a wave towards the chairs surrounding a large conference table. He walked to the end of the table where an office phone sat. “I’ll just be a moment.”
Haverton turned the phone towards him and stared quietly at it for a moment. He seemed to be studying it carefully. Finally, he punched in a couple of numbers.
“Hello?” a voice sounded through the speaker.
“William, you and Davie please join us in the conference room.”
“Yes sir.”
Haverton glanced at the computer sitting in the middle of the conference table, but passed by it and took a seat near Jason.
“Your assessment of our work here is largely correct. We have been working at mapping the cerebral functions of animals. We started with animals, dogs in particular, because it was felt that their well known reasoning capabilities would allow for easier identification of the reasoning processes they were utilizing.”
“So have you succeeded then?” Jason asked.
Before Haverton could answer two men entered the room. The taller dark haired one, William, was dressed in a white shirt, untucked on one side, and black pants. Davie was short, also black hair and seemed to be uncomfortable keeping his glasses positioned right on his face.
“Ah, just in time. Gentlemen, please bring up a 3-D session for us.” Haverton waved at the computer sitting on the table.
The two men mumbled something and William sat down at the computer. He struggled for a couple of minutes to bring up the program. William was clearly not a good typist. At times he seemed to be swatting at the keyboard rather than typing on it.
The main screen of the program sat waiting for William to do something, but the attention of all four men was drawn towards the wall of windows. Out in the cubicles, somewhere out of sight, there were shouts. Briefly, above the top of a cubicle, the heads of two men were visible. They were clearly fighting.
Haverton quickly pulled the blinds closed.
Over his shoulder Jason heard the other two men, William and Davie, whispering. He caught snippets of their words.
“…knew that was coming…”
“…he wanted to move up…”
Jason started to say something, but Haverton spoke first.
“William,” he waved at the computer, “please continue.”
“But…” Jason half pointed back towards the windows.
“Ah, here it is.” Haverton said, waving at the computer.
Jason looked back at the computer and a graphical image that looked like a splattering of paint was displayed on the screen. The various colors twist
ed and wound around each other.
“What is this? Is this a map of the reasoning part of a dog’s brain?” Jason asked.
Haverton shook his head. “Not exactly. As with so many things in this universe, it turned out to be more complicated than that. We were unable to determine a clear differentiation between basic instinct and higher reasoning---our original target. Instead what we did find, and what we are looking at here, is rough delineations between knowledge---factual data storage---and personality---behavior patterns based on extrapolations from the stored knowledge.”
“You were able to map out the personality of the dog?” Jason’s mind began to run ahead. If you could map out personalities then the next logical step would be to map out the personalities of the general population. Knowing which individuals were likely to be trouble and which ones would be an asset could have tremendous uses.
“More or less, yes.” Haverton replied.
“This could be a major benefit to mankind. A great leap forward.” Jason spoke distractedly. Not only, he thought, could we better manage a society, but it would be highly useful to the military in determining insurgents from innocent civilians.
“And other species as well.” Haverton said.
Jason glanced briefly at Haverton. “I suppose so.” He said, not really following Haverton’s line of thinking. Jason’s mind was jumping to possibilities and various applications for this technology. This could be big for Twinsom---very big.
“Where are you at identifying specific personality traits?” Jason asked.
Haverton hesitated for just a moment. “Well, we haven’t been able, currently,