Genie and Other Weird Tales (7 page)

A large screen hung from the ceiling, an extension of Addison's workspace that allowed her to share representations of Flux's activity with me. Despite having pioneered the science that underpinned it all, I was often baffled by the rapidly changing graphics on her screen. They always dazzled though, and my pulse quickened with pride and awe when I saw them.

That morning I'd come into the office to review the first experiment of its kind on a live human subject. I found Addison at her desk, entranced by her laptop. A crumpled blanket lay discarded on a gurney that protruded from the great beige ring of the Lazarus scanner. She had conducted the experiment the previous evening and hinted I might find the results disturbing on a commercial as well as an ethical level. All the Flux units glowed fierce red as the data from the emulated mind of a man called Gary Fitch came to life on the screen. Gary was our studio manager and the most sarcastic and insolent member of staff.

“Bear with me,” said Addison as she clacked her keyboard.

“What went wrong? Is he OK?” I hadn't considered the prospect of litigation, or worse, prosecution until now. On the other side of the office, behind the soundproof glass, Gary sat slumped at his desk in front of his laptop in a pose that reminded me of Stephen Hawking, a normal posture for Gary, but I worried that the scan was more invasive than we'd planned. A few subtle indicators reassured me that he lived: the jiggling of his stripy orange trainers, the play of light on his shiny pate as he shifted his head, and the odd twitch of his shoulders beneath his crumpled check shirt.

“Of course he's OK. You know the procedure is safe.”

“To be honest Addison we know nothing of the sort. We've only scanned a few nematode worms. And Felix.”

“And Felix is fine.”

“But Felix is a rat.” I flexed my fingers and wished I still smoked. We'd cloned Felix's little rat mind very successfully, and we'd kindled it to life on Flux. Every part of his brain had been emulated. We'd fed maze simulations through his visual cortex, then we'd monitored the activity in his primary motor cortex. The plucky little virtual rodent had run round the mazes with the same enthusiasm as that of his fleshly forbear. And to our delight he'd colonised swathes of unformatted Flux space next to that which he'd initially occupied, and had become much cleverer. We'd given him increasingly complex mazes, which he'd navigated and remembered with ease. Real Felix, or flesh and blood Felix, was still happily living in his cage, eating rat meal and enjoying the treadmill.

Addison ceased typing and glanced at my twitching hands, then met my eyes. “Gary's OK. Look at him. He's fine.” She nodded at the slumped, staring figure behind the glass. “He woke just before seven, starving, tired and moaning about terrible dreams. But he wanted to catch up on some work.”

“So what's wrong?”

“You'll see. Or hear, rather. But overall it's a spectacular success. We've made history, like we did with Felix.” She clicked and tapped her way through a series of screens and windows until a graph appeared. “There.” She traced her finger along the luminous spiky line. “Gary came alive on Flux at five twenty one this morning. The brain emulation kicked off after the download finished.”

I leaned forward and peered at the graph, a jagged stalagmite rising from a flat line. “So, that is Gary?”

“Most definitely. We can be certain of that.”

“How?”

I often found Addison spooky, especially when she was excited. She looked as if she was staring at the sun, and it was burning her eyes, and she didn't care. “Let's drill down to the activity in Broca's area.” She tapped and clacked and a longer, more complex graph appeared on the screen.

My chest tightened. “You've done the pattern matching already?” During the last few months we'd all taken turns to listen to selected passages of prose while our brain activity was monitored and analysed by a device called a Language Pattern Recognition Module, which allowed us to match activity patterns with words and phonemes. Addison had written the software to reconstruct speech from the patterns. We'd already patented it for medical use to help the speech-impaired.

“Listen,” she said, tapping her space bar and sitting back to gauge my reaction.

A sound like someone trying to inhale and speak whilst being drowned in an echo chamber filled the room. Amid the chaos I could hear the same sound repeating. It sounded like someone saying the word “applebaum”.

Addison smiled. “Apple blossom. I told Gary to remember the phrase 'apple blossom.' That it was very important. And if he felt strange in the night he should repeat it, so we'd know he was there.”

“And that didn't freak him out at all?”

“No, it puzzled him. But he believed us when we told him he'd be absolutely safe. I didn't expect him to be so compliant. But anyway, listen to this. I put a filter on it. Extrapolated from his real voice.” She rattled and clacked and splayed her fingers with a flourish.

The robot voice became more human, more like Gary's Edinburgh brogue. I felt a constriction in my vessels and a sharp drop in my body temperature. He sounded real now, and very lonely, like a man trapped in a small, sealed confined space, a soul abandoned in darkness whose only hope was a hollow spell. There was a note of determination in the voice, a heroic stoicism undermined by ebbing faith.

Addison's eyes continued to shine. “The terrible thing is, he said 'apple blossom' twelve hundred and thirty four times before varying his routine. He was sticking to the program like a good boy. But all that data was output in about five seconds. So, at the rate he was saying 'apple blossom' ...” She trailed off.

“He was on a different time scale.”

She nodded and smiled. “Time passed about a thousand times faster for him. God knows why.” Her index finger swirled on the mouse pad of her laptop. “Fast forward an hour and he sounds really upset.” She jabbed the space bar, and the synthetic brogue sounded again.

“Why would you do this to me? Why, why, what for ? I'm no monster ...”

She jabbed her keyboard and the sound ceased. “Interesting how fear and desperation are reconstructed from the raw data. This is what would have animated his vocal chords, his lips, his tongue, his throat. And the weird thing, the voice gets hoarse.”

I nodded, unable to speak. The sounds and Addison's commentary fascinated and nauseated me in equal measure.

“Which you would think is impossible. There must some sort of proprioception, some feedback going on. What he experiences as his body is one big phantom limb. Even though he doesn't have anything to feel hoarseness, his voice gets hoarse, which is reflected in the diminishing strength of the voice.” She raised her hand to the keyboard again.

I raised a flat palm. “Addison, no more of that, please.”

She looked a little surprised, then nodded. “No, of course not. There'll be plenty of time to sift the data. It really is a gold mine, even though it looks like a failure at first glance.”

“How does it end?” I thought of the rapid decline of the activity graph.

“Not well. Not well at all. He becomes incoherent. After that the activity in the Broca's area becomes hard to decipher. The voice filter doesn't help. We just get a load of wailing, echoing and squeaking, like dolphins being tortured. In the final few minutes the activity goes into rapid decline and ceases around quarter to seven. So an hour for us ...”

“Is a thousand hours for him.”

“It's exciting Hammond. This is totally new.”

My stomach fluids had curdled. “We sent him to hell,” I said.

Addison tutted and snapped her laptop shut. “He's fine. Look.” I turned and looked at Gary raising a latte to his lips, transfixed by his screen. “He's in the zone. A happy geek.”

I shook my head, my eyes adrift. “That was someone experiencing terrible distress.” It's odd to recall my old self, crippled by conscience and a morbid imagination.

“It's a phenomenon, nothing more. Patterns output by a machine.”

“We created a being born to suffer.” I stared at her, and she shrugged. “And what are we going to tell Jack?” Jack represented the sponsor. His company funded our research.

“Tell him what happened.”

“He's going to pull the plug.”

“What on earth does he expect?”

I rubbed my forehead. “A game-changing breakthrough.”

“We're as good as there. I can think of loads of spin-offs with the work we've already done. A new lease of life for locked-in syndrome victims. Life changing prosthetics ...”

I let out a harsh little laugh and continued to rub my forehead. “That's not really Jack's bag.”

“No I get that, Hammond. But we're making progress at an astonishing rate.”

“Not quick enough for him.”

“As quick as is remotely feasible.”

“I know,” I said, sighing.

“So why are you stressed? You should be over the moon.”

I scrunched, then opened my eyelids, and watched Addison come into focus through the blear. The suffering we'd just heard was causing me stress, but I saw little point in discussing that with her. Something else was bothering me. Jack had a way of expressing himself that chilled me to the core. A recent example came to mind.

“Last night,” I said, “when I left you and Gary in the lab, I had a text conversation with Jack. He wanted to know how everything went. I told him that I hoped that things were fine. He picked up on the word 'hope' and asked me if I feared trouble. I told him, as I've done many times, that these are uncharted waters. Five minutes later I got one of those strange texts that he sometimes sends late at night. It said:
On the eve of Trinity some thought the sky would catch fire.
”

“What on earth did he mean by that?”

“I texted back a single question mark. To which he replied
Lookitup ffs
”

“And did you look it up?”

“No, I remembered.” In my inner eye I saw a white hot flash and a cloud rising like a demonic fist. “The Trinity tests. The first nuclear detonation.”

I watched a frown form on her beautiful brow.

“He's comparing it to that,” I said. “He's not interested in helping damaged and handicapped people. He wants us to help him make weapons. He wants us to help him be powerful.”

“Well, he'll have to be patient then won't he?” she said with a shrug and a smirk.

God, I envied her. Her intellect was vast, she hadn't burnt any professional bridges, and thousands of companies were crying out for her skills. The prospect of funds being withdrawn didn't frighten her at all.

If you enjoyed the stories and the sample, I think you’ll love the rest of the novel. Its riveting, warped and darkly comic and I’m putting the finishing touches to it right now. If you follow the link below and give me your email address, I can let you know when its out, and when I’ve got anything else coming out.

http://writing.killip.co.uk/keep-informed

… and you’ll find up to date info on all of my books on

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Thanks for getting right to the end of this booklet, hope all is well with you.

Alan.