The Deplosion Saga Page 11

“Well, the start, anyway. I’ve just sent the paper resulting from my calculations to your email. I hope you will approve it to be submitted for publication.”

  “You wrote a paper? Just now? In a few minutes?”

  “Let’s say, I finished one that I’ve been tinkering with for quite some time. The long relationship with my lattice helps a lot with that kind of thing. However, it does extract its payment. I’ll be famished again in about an hour.”

  “You've lost me," Pratt admitted. "How exactly does this relate to our discussion?”

  Greg jumped in. “If there is a physics describing how natural laws are generated and interact with each other, that would open the realm of the super-natural to scientific investigation.”

  “Exactly,” continued Darian. “We should be able to settle questions of the existence of souls, ghosts, and even God, once and for all. Once we remove these quaint concepts from our thinking, we’ll be able to proceed with a rational exploration of the basis of reality.”

  “I think you can all see why we were so pleased to be able to steal Dr. Leigh from Stanford,” President Sakira chuckled. “What will you call this new physics, Dr. Leigh?”

  Before Darian could answer, Larry suggested, “We should call it Natural Law Effect Physics.”

  “No way,” said Kathy. “The acronym would be NLEP. Too clumsy.” She scrunched her eyes, thinking fiercely. Greg loved watching her think.

  “Hey, I know,” she continued, “When I was an undergrad, one of the companies we studied was Apple, you know, before they merged with IBM to become Apple International. One of their founders, Steve Jobs, was famous for getting people to see things his way. People used to say that he had a Reality Distortion Field because he could convince people to redefine their perceptions of what was real or possible when he was around.

  “This new physics would be sort of the opposite. You could call it a Reality Assertion Field. RAF.”

  “I like that," said President Sakira. “I met Steve Jobs once when I interned at Apple. I think he would have been amused. What do you think, Dr. Leigh?”

  “I agree, and I think my dad would have liked it, too” Darian replied with a grin.

  President Sakira stood and raised her coffee cup. “I propose a toast.” Cups and glasses rose, and a handful of beaming faces looked at her expectantly. “I would like, once again, to welcome Dr. Darian Leigh to Simon Fraser University. We look forward to a long and productive relationship, and to a brilliant career—especially if today’s dazzling display is any indication. Here's to your first discovery at SFU, the Reality Assertion Field.”

  The table answered with a hearty, “To the Reality Assertion Field!”

  Dr. Pratt extended his sweating glass of iced tea in Darian’s general direction and performed a brief but convincing requisite sip, while he glared over the rim. The Reverend will not be pleased about this.

  14

  NCSA recording of a conversation between Dr. Lucius Pratt (Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Pacifica) and Reverend Alan LaMontagne (Austin, Tx, New Confederacy) on October 7, 2037.

  Pratt: Hello?

  LaMontagne: Dr. Pratt?

  Pratt: Speaking.

  LaMontagne: This is Reverend Alan LaMontagne calling from Austin.

  Pratt: Reverend LaMontagne! I wondered if I might hear from you directly. How may I help you?

  LaMontagne: I received a rather disturbing call from Reverend Curtis in Vancouver the other day. He says Darian Leigh is tinkering with God’s Laws of Nature, and that you provided the inspiration for that line of investigation. Is that correct?

  Pratt: If I lent that man inspiration in any way, I assure you, it was in no way intentional. I could never have guessed that our conversation would lead to that. We were hosting Dr. Leigh at a welcome lunch back in July, and Dr. Sakira extended her condolences to the lad on the recent death of his father. She merely remarked that the man’s eternal soul was now resting in a better place, and Dr. Leigh responded with a heartless monolog about how neither he nor his father believed in the human soul as there was no scientific evidence to support its existence.

  LaMontagne: Scientists! They should know better than to stick their noses outside their specialties.

  Pratt: I felt it was my duty to come to the poor woman's defense, so I pointed out that science has little if anything to say about the possible existence of souls. I thought that would put a diplomatic end to it. After all, it was his first day on the job and he was speaking to the President, the Dean of Sciences, and Department Heads. Instead, he attacked me, launching into an aggressive Socratic rant on his depraved view of the soul. He seems to think that souls are as amenable to study as rocks. I couldn’t allow such a statement to go unchallenged. I just couldn't. I made a case that souls belong to the realm of the supernatural; they are not and should not be subject to scientific investigation. I believe I was actually winning the point.

  LaMontagne: So how did he turn the discussion to his favor?

  Pratt: Not by fair argument. He twisted the intent of my words completely. He agreed that souls might be beyond the natural laws but, rather than concede the argument, he announced that he’d used his internal computer to invent some new kind of physics. He claims that mathematics provides some insight into how natural laws, the laws of God, might come into existence, and how they might be manipulated. I was appalled, of course. I could almost believe the man is in league with Satan, himself.

  LaMontagne: He very well could be. [Several seconds of silence follow]

  Pratt: At any rate, there is certainly something unholy about young Dr. Leigh. He is not a normal human being, with this internal machinery, and I fear the level of respect he is accorded by the science community. Playing God is dangerous. The hubris of this man is astounding. He is entirely oblivious to the dangers of what he is doing.

  LaMontagne: Many of his persuasion are so cursed.

  Pratt: When I accepted this position, I knew the deep lack of faith exhibited by the people of this region would require me to hold our Lord, Yeshua, more tightly to my breast than ever. But their lack of Godliness is astonishing, and it has only increased since the formation of this country they call Pacifica. They test me greatly on a daily basis.

  LaMontagne: Your devotion and service to the Church is both noted and appreciated, Dr. Pratt. Evil is strong in the hearts and minds of many scientists. Their materialistic view of the world is an abomination; it reflects the devil’s dark deeds in opposition to our Lord. We are thinking perhaps you could use some assistance in your battle against this evil.

  Pratt: The burden may be great but I believe that I am up to the challenge. I don’t see how anyone might assist me.

  LaMontagne: The aid we're considering would be able to operate more overtly, with no risk of jeopardizing your valuable role within the community. You’ve proven your value in that post to us many times, particularly through your growing insight into the workings of these people. We don't want to risk losing that.

  Pratt: Thank you, Reverend. I must admit, it would be nice to see a more direct challenge to the blasphemy I hear every day within this academic environment.

  LaMontagne: Yes, it is time we begin countering these scientific and humanistic lies, and the long task of returning Pacifica to the righteous path from which it has strayed. [Short silence.] It's decided, then. I will arrive in Vancouver before the end of the year. Can you arrange proper accommodation for me?

  Pratt: It would be my pleasure, Reverend. I will coordinate with Reverend Curtis.

  LaMontagne: Would you also be able to arrange an appropriate time and place for me to engage with Darian Leigh, somewhere outside of his normal environment?

  Pratt: As it happens, we may have the perfect opportunity in place already. The local Philosophers’ Café group just announced that Dr. Leigh will be next month's guest speaker. He'll be discussing this new physics of his. What better place to start demystifying his "infallible" image? Would that work, or would you prefer some
thing sooner?

  LaMontagne: No, that's perfect. My staff will contact you with my itinerary. I won’t meet with you personally while in Vancouver, Dr. Pratt, but I want you to know that you have our thanks for your efforts to date.

  Pratt: Thank you, Reverend LaMontagne; that means so much to me.

  LaMontagne: I’m glad to hear that. Bye, now.

  Pratt: Okay, good bye, sir. Thank you for calling.

  * * *

  The three scientists sat around the pub table staring at the white gel capsules in front of them. They had been staring at them silently for the past ten minutes, no closer to deciding whether to take them.

  “How do we know it’s safe?” Larry voiced the question foremost in all of their thoughts.

  Greg looked to Kathy for assurance, but she appeared to be lost in her own thoughts. “Why wouldn’t it be? Darian said it’s the same combination of dendies he designed for himself at Stanford. He’s not giving us anything he hasn’t already tested on himself.”

  “I mean, why take it at all? We already have our own dendy lattices, the FDA-approved legal version,” Larry pushed.

  “Yes, and they’re state of the art,” Greg said, “but they’re only good for entertainment and communications, Larry. They won’t make us smarter.”

  “I know Darian said the virus is just an upgrade,” Larry replied. “That this version will integrate with our brains more closely but…”

  “Don’t forget, it’s going to augment our biological thought processes with spintronic computational abilities,” added Greg. “It might even make us as smart as him.”

  Larry thought about that. The three had seen for themselves how useful the additional capabilities could be. Darian always had every needed fact immediately accessible. He could do math in his head in milliseconds that would take the rest of them hours to do, while conducting coherent conversation and multiple other tasks. Nevertheless, they worried about potential effects on their personalities. Darian was not exactly the poster child for warm and fuzzy.

  “Yeah, but in a virus?” Larry didn’t like the idea of deliberately infecting himself with anything. It was, at best, unnatural. Possibly dangerous. One reason he’d chosen to become a physicist and not a biologist was because he didn’t like dealing with the uncertainty of living organisms.

  “It boils down to whether we want to follow Darian at his speed, or at ours.” Greg picked up the capsule and turned it over in his hands.

  During the past three months, the group had worked obsessively to flesh out the mind-boggling implications of Reality Assertion Field theory, while simultaneously engineering a prototype RAF generator. Darian begrudgingly adapted to the demands of life as a professor, including the heavy teaching and committee requirements, the long office hours, and the incessant student inquiries that pulled him away from the work he loved.

  But the team sensed his frustration with how long the new field was taking to develop, even though their pace had been more than adequate by normal scientific standards.

  Greg tried to imagine how Darian felt. Why settle for such plodding progress? Why are we hampering ourselves? We could be achieving so much more as a team if we all hosted our own internal dendy lattices with Darian’s capabilities.

  Whether plodding or blazing, the RAF generator moved steadily toward completion. The device itself turned out to be much smaller than any of them would have predicted, about the same size as an old-fashioned laptop computer.

  In preceding decades, physicists had thought it necessary to use more powerful machines to achieve the energy levels needed to explore the physics of basic particles. However, the Reality Assertion Field theory suggested computational power, rather than sheer energy level, was more important in generating fields that established local natural laws.

  The three postdocs didn’t quite understand why that would be but, according to Darian, the math was unequivocal. And so they proceeded, hoping it wouldn't turn out be a complete waste of time and effort.

  “Are they even legal?” Larry picked up his own gel-cap and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Well, you won’t find them on the list of approved medical devices,” answered Greg. “Does it really matter, though? This is like the Holy Grail of smarts; these things can raise our effective IQs into the stratosphere. Who cares if they’re legal? Regulation and laws are so far behind current technology that it’s laughable. And when the bureaucracy does make a ruling, it’s even more laughable. They’re ill-equipped to make the decisions they’re tasked with. You know that every bit as well as I do.”

  Larry was not convinced. “That's if they work. That's a big if. And what about the risks? What if something goes wrong? Don't forget, Darian was still in the womb when the dendies were introduced into his bloodstream. His nervous system was still developing, and his body had years to adapt. His mom was an adult when she injected herself. We all know what happened to her.”

  “It’s not like he’s forcing us to take them,” Kathy noted. “It’s more like a gift, a really valuable gift. Anyway, the legal issues would be all Darian’s. He’s risking a lot to give these to us.”

  “Don’t you think we should analyze them first?” Larry directed this question at Greg.

  “How would you propose we do that? We could get someone to read the viral RNA sequences and calculate the encoded proteins, but then we’d need access to the Washington State supercomputers for a week to calculate even a single folded protein. Even at that, I’m not sure we could interpret what the protein function would be. No, none of us is a dendy lattice expert like Darian. I think we have to trust him.”

  “I wonder how much of his brain is still biological,” Kathy mused.

  “What do you mean?” Larry asked, surprised.

  “If he has incorporated high-speed logic functions into the dendies, wouldn't they be thinking around the brain rather than through it?”

  Greg and Larry stared back at her blankly.

  “I mean, a normal dendy lattice like ours is basically a control and communication device. It reads the activity at our synapses and interprets what that means, or else it feeds external input to the appropriate synapses so that, for example, we can ‘see’ a computer projection without using our eyes.”

  “So?”

  “If I can extrapolate from my early biological-psych textbook, a dendy lattice with computational capability would have to re-create all of our existing synaptic connections in order for us to still be ‘us’, you know, to have our same personality. After the lattice replicated our brain structure and became functional, the lattice signal and decision speeds would supersede neuronal processing speeds. Our neurons would become redundant. I wonder, would they just die out once they’re not needed?”

  Larry had been absent-mindedly kicking the foot of the table and fidgeting in his seat. He stopped abruptly, and brought both of his forearms down on the table with a thump, “You see? You see what I’m talking about? There's so much we don't know! So many risks. So many uncertainties. How could you still be you without your brain? Are we all going to end up as robot-controlled zombies?” he demanded.

  “Oh, you’d still be you, I think,” laughed Kathy, “It would take more than a dendy lattice to override you, Larry. More like a steamroller. The software of your personality would just be running on the faster silicene and crystalline semiconductors instead of on your slow biological neurons. You would still need to compensate for the absence of hormonal influences on personality, though. I'm not sure how that would work.”

  “Seriously, would we even be human at that point? What would happen to our consciousness? Would we even experience being alive?” Larry fretted.

  “I wonder what it would be like to think at that speed,” Kathy said dreamily, “to be that smart but having the software basically…emulating you.

  She sat up straight. “Well, only one way to find out.” She picked up the capsule and popped it into her mouth, washing it down with a gulp of beer.
<
br />   The two men gaped at her.

  “What the hell!” Larry gasped. “How could you just do that?”

  Kathy put down her glass, licking foam from the side of her mouth. “I think we can trust Darian. He may be a bit strange but he still seems human to me. Plus, there’s no reason for him to try to hurt us, and there are lots of reasons for him to try and make us better at what we do. He needs us to be as smart as we can possibly be so that he'll have someone he can discuss his crazy ideas with. I’ve watched him try to explain his theories to you guys and the other profs. It’s like trying to talk calculus with a toddler. Nobody gets it. We need to get it.”

  “Darian doesn’t need anybody,” Larry argued, as Greg’s glass thunked loudly beside him on the wooden tabletop.

  “Ahhhh!” Greg exclaimed, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth with theatrical flair. His gel-cap was also gone.

  “Not you, too!” exclaimed Larry.

  “Kathy’s right. Darian needs us, and I trust him,” Greg answered calmly.

  Larry pushed his chair back, letting it fall, and leaned over his lab mates. He stabbed a finger at the gel cap in his open palm. “This…is an engineered virus. A brain virus, guys.”

  His actions were drawing the attention of a handful of early evening patrons who'd come by the local watering hole to relax. Larry lowered his voice but was no less insistent. “This is potentially dangerous. It’s a huge unknown, on many levels. What happened to you two? You’re acting like a couple of idiot kids on some big adventure, not like the mature, professional scientists you claim to be. Whatever happened to taking measured, reasonable precautions?”

  “Sometimes progress requires risk,” replied Greg.

  “Yeah? Well, this is too much. You've crossed the line here, big time, and there's no coming back from this one!” yelled Larry. He wheeled toward the exit and bumped into the server who'd been on his way over with the manager in tow for backup.

  Larry turned back to the table. His finger jabbed at his two colleagues. “Darian can’t force us to do this. I’m reporting him.” The server and manager tapped his arms on either side, inviting him to leave quietly or be pulled away from the still-seated Greg and Kathy.