Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (31 page)

"So you used us as your monkeys."

"Now, now, let's not jump to conclusions. First, let me give you a quick rundown on my theories. There's one Kiven about codes, and that is there's no such thing as a code that can't be cracked. The reason bein' that codes are composed accordin' to certain basic principles. And these principles, it doesn't matter how complicated or how cxactin', ultimately come down to commonalities intelligible to more than one person. Understand the principle and you can crack the code. Even the most reliable book-to-book codes, where two people exchange messages denotin' words by page and line number in two copies of the same edition of the same book—even then, if someone discovers the right book, the game is up."

"That got me't'thinkin'. There's only one true crack-proof method: you pass information through a 'black boxt'scramble it and then you pass the processed information back through the same black box't'unscramble it. Not even the agent holdin' the black box would know its contents or principle. An agent could use it, but he'd have no understanding of how it worked. If that agent didn't know how it worked, no one could steal the information. Perfect."

"So the black box is the subconscious."

"Yes, that's correct. Each individual behaves on the basis of his individual mnemonic makeup. No two human beings are alike; it's a question of identity. And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin' from the aggregate memories of that individual's past experiences. The layman's word for this is the mind. Not two human beings have the same mind. At the same time, human beings have almost no grasp of their own cognitive systems. I don't, you don't, nobody does. All we know—or think we know—is but a fraction of the whole cake. A mere tip of the icing."

"Now let me ask you a simple question: are you bold, or are you timid?"

"Huh?" I had to think. "Sometimes I get bold and sometimes I'm timid. I can't really say."

"Well, there's your cognitive system for y't. You just can't say all at once. Accordint'what you're up against, almost instantaneously, you elect some point between the extremes. That's the precision programming you've got built in. You yourself don't know a thing about the inner shenanigans of that program. 'Tisn't any need for you't'know. Even without you knowin', you function as yourself. That's your black box. In other words, we all carry around this great unexplored 'elephant graveyard' inside us. Outer space aside, this is truly humanity's last terra incognita."

"No, an 'elephant graveyard' isn't exactly right. 'Tisn't a burial ground for collected dead memories. An 'elephant factory' is more like it. There's where you sort through countless memories and bits of knowledge, arrange the sorted chips into complex lines, combine these lines into even more complex bundles, and finally make up a cognitive system. A veritable production line, with you as the boss. Unfortunately, though, the factory floor is off-limits. Like
Alice in Wonderland
, you need a special drug't'shrink you in."

"So our behavioral patterns run according to commands issued by this elephant factory?"

"Exactly as you say," said the old man. "In other words—"

"Just a second. I have a question."

"Certainly, certainly."

"I get the gist. But the thing is, those behavioral patterns do not dictate actual surface-level behavior. Say I get up in the morning and decide whether I want to drink milk or coffee or tea with my toast. That depends on my mood, right?"

"Exactly so," said the Professor with a nod. "Another complication's that the subconscious mind is always changin'. Like an encyclopedia that keeps puttin' out a whole new edition every day. In order't'stabilize human consciousness, you have to clear up two trouble spots."

"Trouble spots?" I asked. "Why would there be any trouble spots? We're talking about perfectly normal human actions."

"Now, now," said the Professor. "Pursue this much fur-iher and we enter into theological issues. The bottom line liere, if you want't'call it that, is whether human actions are plotted out in advance by the Divine, or self-initiated begin-nin' to end. Of course, ever since the modern age, science has stressed the physiological spontaneity of the human organism. But soon's we start askin' just what this spontaneity is, nobody can come up with a decent answer. Nobody's got the keys't'the elephant factory inside us. Freud and Jung and all the rest of them published their theories, but all they did was't'invent a lot of jargon't'get people talkin'. Gave mental phenomena a little scholastic color."

Whereupon the Professor launched into another round of guffaws. Oh-ho-ho. The girl and I could only wait for him to stop laughing.

"Me, I'm of a more practical bent," continued the Professor. "
Render unto Caesar what is
Caesar's
and leave the rest alone. Metaphysics is never more than semantic pleasantries anyway. There's loads't'be done right here before you go drainin' the reality out of everything. Take our black box. You can set it aside without so much as ever touchin' it, or you can use its bein' a black box't'your advantage. Only—" paused the Professor, one finger raised theatrically, "only—you have't'solve two problems. The first is random chance on the surface level of action. And the other is changes in the black box due't'new experiences. Neither is very easy't'resolve. Because, like you said, both are perfectly normal for humans. As long as an individual's alive, he will undergo experience in some form or other, and those experiences are stored up instant by instant. To stop experiencin' is to die."

"This prompted me't'hypothesize. What would happen if you fixed a person's black box at one point in time? If afterwards it were't'change, well, let it change. But that black box of that one instant would remain, and you could call it up in just the state it was. Flash-frozen, as it were."

"Wait a minute. That would mean two different cognitive systems coexisted in the same person."

"You catch on quick," said the old man. "It confirms what I saw in you. Yes, Cognitive System A would be on permanent hold, while the other would go on changin'… a', a", a'"… without a moment's pause. You'd have a stopped watch in your right pocket and a tickin' watch in your left. You can take out whichever you want, whenever you want."

"We can address the other problem by the same principle: cut off all options open to Cognitive System A at surface level. Do you follow?"

No, I didn't.

"In other words, we scrape off the surface just like the dentist scrapes off plaque, leaving the core consciousness. No more margin of error. We just strip the cognitive system of its outer layers, freeze it, and plunk it in a secret compartment. That's the original scheme of shuffling. This much I'd worked out in theory for myself before I joined the System."

"In order to conduct brain surgery?"

"Yes, but only as necessary," the Professor allowed. "No doubt, if I'd proceeded with my research, I would have bypassed the need for surgery. Sensory-deprivation para-hypnotics or some such external procedure't'create similar conditions. But for now, there's only electrostimulation. That is, artificial alteration of currents flowin' through the brain circuitry. Nothin' fancy. 'Tisn't anythin' more than a slight modification of normal procedures in current use on psychotics or epileptics. Cancel out electrical impulses emitted by the aberration in the… I take it I should dispense with the more technical details?"

"If you don't mind," I said.

"Well, the main thing is, we set up a junction box't' channel brain waves. A fork, as it were. Then we implant electrodes along with a tiny battery so that, at a given signal, the junction box switches over, click-click."

"You put electrodes and a battery inside my head?"

"Of course."

"Great," I said, "just great."

"No need for alarm. Isn't anythin' so frightenin'. The implant is only the size of an
azuki
bean, and besides, there's plenty of people walkin' around with similar units and pacemakers in other parts of their body."

"Now the original cognitive system—the stopped-watch circuit—is a blind circuit. Once you enter that circuit, you don't perceive a thing in your own flow of thought; you have absolutely no awareness of what you think or do. If we didn't arrange it that way, you'd be in there foolin' with the cognitive system yourself."

"But there's got to be problems with irradiating the core consciousness after it's stripped. That's what one of your staff told me after the operation."

"All very correct. But we still hadn't established that at the time. We were workin' on supposition. Well, we'd done a
few
human experiments. Didn't want't'expose valuable human resources such as you Calcutecs't'any dangers right off the bat, y'know. The System selected ten people for us. We operated on them and watched for results."

"What sort of people?"

"The System wouldn't tell us. They were ten healthy males, with no history of mental irregularities. IQ 120 or above. Those were the only conditions. The results were moderately encouragin'. In seven out of the ten, the junction box functioned without a hitch. In the other three, the junction box didn't work; they couldn't switch cognitive system or they confused them or they got both."

"What happened to the confused ones?"

"We fixed them back the way they were, disconnected the junction box. No harm done. Meanwhile, we continued trainin' the seven, until a number of problems became apparent: one was a technical problem, others had't'do with the subjects themselves. First of all, the call sign for switchin' the junction box was too codependent. We started off with a five-digit number, but for some reason a few of them switched junctions at the smell of grape juice. Found that out one lunchtime."

The chubby girl giggled next to me, but for me it was no laughing matter. Soon after my shuffling actualization, I'd been by disturbed by all sorts of different smells. For example, I could swear the girl's melon
eau de cologne
made me hear things. If your cognitive system turned over each time you smelled a different odor, it could be disaster.

"We solved that by dispersin' special sound waves between the numbers. Call signs that caused reactions very similar't'the reactions't'certain smells. Another problem, depending on the individual, was that the junction box would kick over, but the stored cognitive system wouldn't operate. We found out, after investigatin' all sorts of possibilities, that the problem lay with the subjects' cognitive system from the very beginnin'. The subjects' core consciousness was unstable or too rarefied. Oh, they were healthy and sharp enough, but pyschologically they hadn't established an identity. Or rather, they had identity enough, but had put things in order accordint'that identity, so you couldn't do a thing with them. Just because you got the operation didn't mean you could do shuffling. As clear as could be, there was a screenin' factor at work here."

"Well, that left three of them. And in all three, the junction box kicked over at the prescribed call sign and the frozen cognitive system functioned stably and effectively. So we did additional experiments with them for one more month, and at that point we were given the go-ahead."

"And then, I gather, you proceeded with shuffling actualization?"

"Exactly so. The next phase was't'conduct tests and interviews with close to five hundred Calcutecs. We selected twenty-six healthy males with no history of mental disorders, who exhibited strong psychological independence, and who could control their own behavior and emotions. This all took quite some dbin'. Seein' as tests and interviews leave a lot in the dark, I had the System draw up detailed files on each and every one of you. Your family background, upbringin', school records, sex life, drinkin'… anyway, every thin'."

"Just one thing I don't understand," I spoke up. "From what I've heard, our core consciousness, our black boxes, are stored in the System vault. How is that possible?"

"We did thorough tracings of your cognitive systems. Then we made
 
simulations for storage in a main computer bank. We did it as a kind of insurance; you'd be stuck if anything happened't'you."

"A total simulation?"

"No, not total, of course, but functionally quite close't' total, since the effective strippin' away of surface layers made tracin' that much easier. More exactly, each simulation was made up of three sets of planar coordinates and holographs. With previous computers that wasn't possible, but these new-generation computers incorporate a good many elephant factory-like functions in themselves, so they can handle complex mental constructs. You see, it's a question of fixed structural mappin'. It's rather involved, but't'put it simple for the layman, the tracin' system works like this: first, we input the electrical pattern given off by your conscious mind. This pattern varies slightly with each readin'. That's because your chips keep gettin' rearranged into different lines, and the lines into bundles. Some of these rearrangements are quantifiably meaningful; others not so much. The computer distinguishes among them, rejects the meaningless ones, and the rest get mapped as a basic pattern. This is repeated and repeated and repeated hundreds of thousands of unit-times. Like overlayin' plastic film cells. Then, after verifyin' that the composite won't stand out in greater relief, we keep that pattern as your black box."

"You're saying you reproduced our minds?"

"No, not at all. The mind's beyond reproducin'. All I did was fix your cognitive system on the phenomenological level. Even so, it has temporal limits—a time frame. We have't'throw up our hands when it comes to the brain's flexibility. But that's not all we did. We successfully rendered a computer visualization from your black box."

Saying this, the Professor looked first at me, then at his chubby granddaughter.

"A video of your core consciousness. Something no-body'd ever done. Because it wasn't possible. I made it possible. How do you think I did it?"

"Haven't a clue."

"We showed our subjects some object, analyzed the electromagnetic reactions in their brains, converted that into numerics, then plotted these as dots. Very primitive designs in the early stages, but over many many repetitions, revisin' and fillin' in details, we could regenerate what the subjects had seen on a computer screen. Not nearly so easy as I've described it, but simply put, that's what we did. So that after goin' over and over these steps how many times, the computer had its patterns down so well it could autosimu-late images from the brain's electromagnetic activity. The computer's really cute at that."