Edward M. Lerner - Presence of Mind

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2024-11-24 0 0 84.43KB 28 页 5.9玖币
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Presence of Mind
by Edward M. Lerner
When new capabilities create new dangers, there are two ways to respond....
Chapter 1
Thwock.
The bright red ball rebounded with a most satisfying sound, although the racquet continued on its arc
without any apparent impact. Doug Carey hurriedly wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his
racquetless left arm, carefully keeping his begoggled eyes on the ball. Precisely as he'd intended, the ball
passed through a translucent green rectangle suspended in the vertical plane that bisected the court. The
ball instantly doubled its speed.
Across the court, his opponent grunted as he lunged. Jim Schulz caught the ball on the tip of his
racquet and expertly flipped the orb back through the green region. The ball redoubled its speed. Doug
swore as he dived in vain after the ball. It swept past him, obliquely grazed the floor, and careened first
from the rear wall and then from a side wall. The ball winked out of existence as it fell once again,
untouched by Doug's racquet, to the floor. “Good one,” he panted.
Jim waved his racquet in desultory acknowledgment, his T-shirt sodden with sweat. “Pull,” he called
out, and a new red ball materialized from the ether. Jim smacked the ball to the court's mid-plane, just
missing the drifting triple-speed purple zone. The unaccelerated serve was a cream puff; Doug ruthlessly
slammed it through purple on his return. A red blur shot past Jim to a brown “dead zone” on the rear
wall, from which the suddenly inert ball dropped like a brick. This ball, too, disappeared.
“Roll ‘em.” Yet another red ball appeared, again in midair, this time at Doug's invocation. He twisted
the racquet as he stroked the ball, imparting a wicked spin. The serve curved its way across the court,
rebounding oddly from the floor and side wall.
Not oddly enough. Jim pivoted gracefully, tracking the ball around the rear corner. He stepped
behind the ball as it sailed off the back wall, from which position he casually backhanded it. The ball
soared lazily to midcourt, aimed squarely at a drop-dead zone scant inches from the floor.
Doug dashed to center court, ignoring an alert tone as he crossed the warning line on the floor. He
desperately swung his racquet into the slight clearance between the vertical brown region and the floor.
He misjudged slightly: the body of the racquet swept effortlessly through the court's vertical bisection
plane, but the handle struck with a thud. A loud blat of disapproval disapproval drowned out his sharp
intake of breath, but not the jolt of pain that shot up his arm. All but the offending handle vanished as he
dropped the racquet. “Damn, that smarts!”
“You OK?”
Doug grimaced in response, rubbing his left hand against his right forearm just below the elbow. He
pressed a thumb into a seeming birthmark on the forearm, and was rewarded with a subcutaneous click.
“I think we're done for today. Don't watch if you're feeling squeamish.” The words, forced between
clamped teeth, indicated his distress. He grasped firmly with his left hand, and twisted. The right forearm
popped off, to be placed gently onto the court floor. Doug massaged the shocked area vigorously. “To
coin a phrase, ouch.”
Jim walked to center court, beads of sweat running down his face and glistening in his lop-sided
mustache. He sported possibly the last long sideburns within western civilization. “Anything I can do?”
“Uh-uh.” The answer was distracted.
His friend pointed at the numerals glowing on the ceiling. “Twelve to ten, pretty close. Let's pick up
there next time. I'll call you tonight. Abracadabra.” The last phrase was directed at the court, not Doug.
Jim disappeared as thoroughly as had the out-of-play balls earlier, but with the added touch of a puff of
white smoke.
“Abracadabra,” Doug agreed. Jim's half of the room promptly vanished, revealing at what had been
center court the wall that had so rudely interrupted the game. He studied the quarter-inch-deep gouge in
the plasterboard that indicated by how much his depth perception had failed him. Virtual racquetball with
real divots: Maintenance would just love that.
Sighing, he reached for the Velcro buckle of his game goggles-and missed. Look, Ma, no hand. He
was more successful with his left arm. The colored regions floating about the room, the glowing
scoreboard, the lines on the floor-all of the ephemera-disappeared. Stark white walls now surrounded
him, interrupted only by glass-covered, inset mini-cam ports and the thin outline of a tightly fitting door.
Doug laid down his computer-controlled goggles carefully, although its LCD eyepieces and stereo
speakers weren't all that fragile, then wrestled himself back into the prosthetic forearm. Hopefully, the
impact of racquet on wall hadn't injured the limb. He'd find out soon enough.
Doug glanced at his wristwatch, and it was as late as he'd feared. The more conventional part of
work called.
* * *
Doug strode from the virtual-reality lab to his office, whose laser-carved wooden nameplate
announced him to be Manager, Neural Interfaces Department. He paused beside his secretary's desk to
check out his tie. He'd have been amazed if it hadn't needed straightening. No surprises today.
The reflection in the sidelight to his office door revealed someone tall and well built, if not as thin as
he'd like. Still, 185 pounds at six-foot two was respectable. Thick and unruly hair, all black but for a hint
of gray at the temples, remained damp from his post-game shower. His most prominent feature was a
nose too large for his taste. Aquiline, Doug reminded himself, aquiline. Like an eagle. The hint of a
mischievous smile flashed and was gone. What eagle had a bump like this on its beak? His hood
ornament had come courtesy of a long-ago pick-up football game gone a little too enthusiastic. He
tugged the knot into something more closely resembling its intended configuration, then entered his office.
A visitor stood waiting inside his office, scanning titles on his bookshelf. She turned to face him. It
was Cheryl Stern's first job interview at BioSciCorp, and Doug found himself taken aback. Cascades of
wavy brown hair framed a face graced by wide-set hazel eyes, an upturned nose, and a sensual mouth.
Her brief smile seemed forced and out of practice. She was slender and, he guesstimated, about five-foot
four. All in all, very attractive. He was instantly shamed by a memory of Holly.
Doug hastened to offer her a guest chair, shut the door, then hid behind his desk. Her application sat
in a manila folder in front of him. He got his mind back on the interview and the resume. The resume, he
reminded himself severely, that had earned her the invitation to this meeting.
“Thanks for coming in, Cheryl. I hope you didn't have any trouble finding us.”
“Your secretary's directions were great. I gather she gets to give them out a lot.”
The implied question was: how many people am I competing against? He also couldn't help noticing
that she sat perched just a little too far forward in her seat. He tried for a friendly grin. “There's no
opening per se. I'm sure you know how few people there are in the neural-interfacing field. When a
resume as good as yours crosses my desk, I make a point of talking to its owner. If you're as talented as
this suggests, I'll make a spot.”
She relaxed a bit at his answer, but said nothing.
“Let's start with one of those open-ended questions interviewees hate-I try to get those out of the
way before taking candidates to lunch. That way, you'll actually get to eat. Why don't you tell me a little
about yourself?”
It was quickly clear that she wasn't going to volunteer anything not already on her resume. “Excuse
me, please, Cheryl. What I'd like to hear is more along the lines of what you're looking for in a job. For
instance, why did you contact BioSciCorp?”
It took a few tries, but he eventually got her to open up. “...And neural interfacing fascinates me. Still,
when I consider the potential of linking the human brain directly with a computer, my imagination can't
quite handle it. Sure, I know all of the standard predictions: speed-of-thought control of complex
machinery, immediate access to entire libraries, mind-to-mind communications between people using the
computer as an intermediary. What I don't believe is that any of us truly understands what these
capabilities would really mean. If we pull it off, neural interfacing could have as big an impact on
civilization as the industrial revolution.”
“I agree, it'll be astonishing. However, that's not exactly what we're working on here.”
“Close, though.”
“One step along the way,” he conceded. “Mind if I do a quick overview of what we're up to here in
my little corner of BioSciCorp?”
“I'd like that.”
“OK, then. Basically, we're trying to walk before we run. The human brain is the most complex piece
of neural engineering that we know, right?” She nodded to fill in his pause. “The truth is,
we-humans-don't begin to understand how the brain works. We're not even close to cracking the code.
That's why BSC is trying to connect a computer to a much simpler structure of nerve cells.”
“Say you do connect a lower life-form to a computer. How would you know if any communication
was taking place?”
“Who said anything about lower life-forms?” He took a moment's malicious satisfaction from her
puzzled look, then relented-sort of. He raised his right arm, thinking hard about his hand. The
microprocessor-controlled prosthetic hand slowly rotated a full 360°, its wrist seam unseen behind a shirt
cuff. In the suddenly silent room, Doug heard the whirrr of the motor by a freak of sound conduction
through his own body.
“You've connected to the nervous system.” Her eyes were wide with wonder. “That's astonishing.”
Then the other aspect of Doug's revelation struck home, and she cringed. “Oh, I'm sorry. I just get so
wrapped up in technology. I don't mean to make light of your, uh....”
“No need to feel uncomfortable, Cheryl.” He lifted a wry eyebrow. “In the land of the prosthesis
manufacturer, the one-armed man is king.”
She had to laugh-a trait he couldn't help but find endearing in a prospective employee. “Um, but
seriously, how did you do that?”
“My stomach alarm went off ten minutes ago. What say BSC springs for lunch, and we pick up
afterward?” “That's a deal.”
* * *
After lunch and a promising continuation of Cheryl's interview, Doug did some management by
walking around.
There'd been a virus attack while he'd been eating. They'd been semi-lucky. On the one hand, the
invader was not benign. On the other hand (an expression from which Doug could not break himself), the
program was clumsy and well understood. Well understood, that was, at the Inter-Agency Computer
Network Security Forum, the federal crisis-management organization that strove valiantly, if with mixed
success, “to stem the rising tide of computer break-ins.” The Web announcement of the forum's
formation had brought unbidden to Doug's mind the image of King Canute drowning in a sea of hostile
data. A far-from-bitsy bit sea.
The virus was brand-new that day, and hence unknown by and invisible to the company's Internet
firewall, but the forum's web site already listed eighteen attacks. Behind a cute pop-up window
(Dyslexics of the World Untie) hid a cruel, if apt, intent: randomly scrambling the memory of the invaded
computers computers. It had to be a new infestation: their backup files were all uninfected.
In short, they'd had a close call. He wondered if they'd be as lucky the next time.
[Back to Table of Contents] Chapter 2
Cheryl's stomach rumbled with apprehension as she approached the BSC lobby. So long as it only
rumbles, she thought. Spending my first day on the job in the Women's Room is no way to make a good
first impression.
She didn't exactly understand the source of her misgivings. Both interviews had gone well, and Doug
had extended the job offer quite quickly. She certainly seemed to hit it off with her new boss. Maybe that
was the problem-she didn't want to hit it off too well. She knew the effect that her looks had on men,
and-on the job-it annoyed the hell out of her. Off the job, she never found the time for it to matter.
After replaying the interviews in her mind, she decided that neither Doug nor his all-male staff had
seriously questioned her. They'd concentrated instead on selling BioSciCorp. Why were they so eager to
hire her? Not that she didn't need the job...
When she asked him about it, instead of answering, Doug took a fat folder from a stack on his desk.
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