Lab Rat 2020: Mind = Machine

CHAPTER ONE

Feeling cold and hungry, Victoria Crawford sat with Human Simulation Unit 2, peering through the glass windows of the observation room, watching a surgery just entering its eighth hour.

The surgical lab was located deep in the lower levels of the Chicago corporate offices of Network Environment Technologies – NET –, a large company known to the public as a premium provider of management consulting services. The existence of this surgical center and the fact that NET secretly housed a private research and development group was unknown to most people, including the shareholders of the publicly traded giant.

Microscopic roving cameras, broadcasting detailed images from deep within their patient, guided the efforts of three doctors quietly performing the now-familiar implant procedure; the high-tech lab, packed with sensors and monitors, was nearly silent. Blond haired, blue eyed Toby Crawford – their seven-year-old patient, a genius with a photographic memory – suffered from agnosia, caused by arrested development of the right parietal lobe. He had no short-term memory, a condition they were laboring to reverse.

The relative silence of the past two hours was broken by an abrupt question from one of the doctors, startling Victoria, who was numb from the long hours; she was not certain who was speaking:

Do you think he can see the boot sequence?

Well, I can see the optic nerves are active, and the oculomotor nerves seem to be following the messages. He’s only under twilight anesthetics at this point. I suspect he will notice OS messages for some time, then eventually just ignore them as background noise. He does have the ability to suppress messages if he chooses, but the OS is fairly silent after booting.

Toby’s eyes were still closed, but his right eye mechanically followed the console messages flickering in the periphery of his vision:

BMesh Network OS v10.2 boot… Success…

v10xCPUx10

Memory check … 997,000,000,000,000,000... Success…

Power level… 10000 A, LOW… estimate 2 weeks remaining…

BMesh 10.2 online…

Searching for connections…

Negotiating with NETMESH v2...

Victoria stood and stretched, trying to distract herself from the knowledge that she was one of a select few who knew the truth about Toby – that he had been born here at Network Environmental Technologies, that this incredible little boy’s life was the result of a long, highly engineered, research project. Then, mere hours after his birth, the years spent engineering his existence turned personal for Toby, as he was subjected to a regiment of accelerated training programs. Every day, endless hours of his young life had been spent with strangers, honing and studying his dual gifts of advanced reasoning and apparently perfect memory. While he was capable of solving extreme logic problems in several disciplines, his lack of a fully functioning short-term memory meant he was always disoriented and incapable of developing normal relationships even with those who had spent years raising him.

You should get something to eat, said HS2, or perhaps I should buy you a drink?

HS2, a human simulation made to physically resemble a handsome thirty-year-old man, raised his perfectly manicured eyebrows, playfully waiting for her reaction. Victoria looked back at him, faking astonishment.

You are such a flirt! said Victoria. But you’re right, I should eat – I’m off to do just that.

HS2 was the crown jewel of NET’s secret Human Simulation – HS – project, and Victoria found his amazing insight, made possible mostly due to the vast array of network sensors he monitored at any given time, a bit unnerving.

Can you detect the bio organism? Victoria asked.

Oh yes! There’s definitely a new node connected to the mesh network, and its host is that young man. I can see the organism is charging electrical power. The memory and CPU diagnostics were successful and the radio appears to be functioning.

Victoria shivered, a chill passing through her body. Despite being afraid of raising her expectations only to be disappointed, temporary light shone on the dark, relentless doubt that Toby could ever lead a normal life. There’s no turning back now, she thought, turning to leave the observation room.

HS2, please stay here and keep an eye on Toby, Victoria said.

Yes dear, HS2 said with a wink.

William Cunningham was assisting with the surgery. The fifty-five year old director of artificial intelligence projects had worked his way through the bureaucracy at NET for over twenty-five years. He was still trim, in shape from regular workouts, with just a dusting of grey hair beginning at his temples. William was recognized for his brilliant contributions and had been placed in charge of some of the best technology research projects. His pet project was Human Simulation research, where he was also the primary designer and developer of the systems.

Lead surgeon and long-time friend of William’s, Dr. Benjamin Pickerington said, William, you should head back to Ron’s office now, he’ll be there soon and can give you a better review of this procedure and set your expectations again on Toby’s recovery and abilities in the next few days.

Thank you Ben, I’ll let you know how we’re doing, William said.

Exhausted, William left the lab in a daze, dropped his scrubs and gloves in a recycling bin and crossed the bright hallway to Dr. Ronald Smith’s outer office. How had placing a biomemory device in Toby’s brain sounded so simple before?

Ron’s assistant, Jenny, wasn’t at her desk. The only light in the reception area came from an end table, and the office appeared deserted. He collapsed onto the sofa, reflecting on recent events.

Victoria, the incredible daughter of his deceased boss, Jacob Crawford, had lived abroad for several years and just recently returned after her father’s death. Victoria had a seven year old son, Toby, from a previous marriage. Having just retuned, the two of them were living in a hotel and needed a better place to stay. William lived alone in a large apartment with plenty of room, and he welcomed the chance to spend time with Victoria again. She had graciously accepted his offer for the two of them to stay with him, but only until she could find a place of their own.

Toby was impressive, with a photographic memory to complement his obviously high IQ. He was only seven, but already spent hours each day with math tutors from the university, giving Victoria plenty of free time. Toby had spent one evening reading a computer fuzzy logic textbook from William’s study and could clearly quote chapter and verse apparently from anyplace in the text. Amazingly, he also seemed to understand the concepts of fuzzy logic, discussing the differences between human cognition and machine inference engines and the challenges of genetic logic gates with William and his colleagues one night after dinner.

Toby also had a massive disability. He possessed highly advanced reasoning skills but could, at best, be described as a bumbling child genius. He was forgetful and frequently lacked the common sense even toddlers exhibited in family situations. He appeared to lack complete control over his short-term memory. Victoria had years’ worth of examples: Toby had occasionally forgotten his name and the names of those closest to him his entire life; he would get lost in familiar places, stumbling around in a daze in their moderately sized apartment or forget eating a meal just an hour earlier. It went on and on…

Victoria’s interest in implanting a bio memory in Toby’s brain intrigued William. In a person so young, perhaps the brain could effectively adapt and utilize the additional memory, and perhaps even the additional computational power built into the organism. The post-surgery risks to Toby were no greater than those he would encounter skinning his knee on the sidewalk, thanks to vast improvements in surgical procedures.

Victoria was familiar with the newest version of this technology, where multiple on-board organic CPU’s were combined with the biomemory and a microwave frequency radio to produce a functioning system on one chip that could be networked with all modern protocols. It was her father who had invented the method of growing, or cloning, an electronic version of the chip into an organism, making it suitable for implanting in living tissue. The feat had drawn massive attention within NET, where small miracles seemed to sprout with great frequency. The new organisms were referred to as NETBioMesh; William’s company, forever in the marketing game, added their acronym to the name to prepare for commercialization.

The CPU and networking portion of this module had no application outside of the lab, but Victoria had been adamant about putting only the best technology into Toby’s brain. Victoria’s deceased father had left her a fortune after selling his consulting firm; money was not an issue. Although she had asked for William‘s opinion on the surgery, the decision was of course hers. If Toby made no use of the chip, it would shut down from lack of power, dissolve, and be gone within a month, just another failed science experiment. Being a scientist, William knew it typically took thousands of such experiments to make a breakthrough. Perhaps Toby would provide another successful link in this particular line of science.

Hello William, said Jenny, returning to the office. Go on back, Victoria arrived some time ago.

Thank you, said William, snapping out of his daydream. He crossed the room quickly, knocked, and opened the door.

CHAPTER TWO

William, come in. We’ve been waiting for you, said Ron. Doctor Ronald Smith, chief of the NET medical research department, was in his late fifties, trim and fit, still with a full head of dark hair. William and Ron were in different branches of the private research group. Ron was an executive and until recently, the two were only casual acquaintances.

That’s the problem with having a trophy girlfriend, said William. Men are always trying to sneak time alone with her.

Oh William stop! The procedure was a success! Victoria beamed rising to greet him. Victoria was wearing a light summer dress, her silhouette apparent, her strawberry blond hair glowing in the late afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows, the only light in the room. She seemed tired but happy. They hugged, and then sat down in matching leather chairs across the desk from Ron.

Indeed, the implant seems to be a success, said Ron pointing to a series of numbers projected on the wall beside his desk. As you can see, the bio organism is online and reporting that the memory, CPUs and the radio all survived. The battery power level is in the low range, as expected; it’s charging and sharing electrical pulses from Toby’s brain.

William was tired and more than slightly suspicious of Dr. Smith’s intentions with Victoria. The procedure and performance of the organism were completely as expected, and he couldn’t force himself to focus on the data displayed.

Using the networked RF organism gives us the flexibility to monitor the device anytime it is connected to the internal mesh net, said Ron.

Monitor the device via our internal mesh net? asked Victoria.

Yes, it’s actually old technology now, said Ron. The real trick, my main goal at least, is converting the software and hardware devices that make this happen into organically grown organisms with identical functionality.

This is incredible, said Victoria. Tell me Ron, can you clone the accelerometer networked devices William is designing? Do you think they could work with this memory we’ve implanted in Toby?

William feeling his blood pressure rising caught and stopped himself from nervously tapping his foot on the rug. Ron was such a bag of wind.

Ron, I must apologize for Victoria, she’s so taken with technology. Let’s discuss Toby’s well being and how we can help his recovery, said William.

Oh William, of course you’re right! said Victoria. Doctor Smith, I’m so sorry for getting us off track.

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