by Tony Corden
Leah agreed after asking Aker to hang the small speaker around her neck.
11
December 22 2073
REAL WORLD
Once the speaker was in place, and Aker had left, Leah stood and from memory made her way toward the kitchen to get a drink. Before she even made it to the door, her mother arrived and carefully took her hand without saying anything. Leah used her left hand, and after tapping her ring finger to her thumb, she typed, “Hi mum, I was just going to get an apple. Can you direct me using words?”
Her mother was startled but carefully said, “How are you doing that?”
“Aker and a friend of mine called Reed worked out how to give me a virtual keypad.”
“How can you hear what I’m saying?”
“I can’t. I only know it’s you because I know what your hand feels like. I need Reed to add some voice recognition to let me know who is talking.”
Lin let go of Leah’s hand and said, “The doorway is at the two o’clock position. That’s right. You’re passing through now. Turn left. Too far, back just a few degrees. That’s right. The opening to the kitchen is three metres in front of you. Good. Turn to your right, and the kitchen bench is two metres in front of you. Stop. There is a chair an arm’s length away on your right. Good. Sit down, and I’ll get you an apple.”
Lacey had approached as Lin was talking and said, “Is her hearing coming back?”
Lin said, “It’s Lacey.”
Leah used her left hand again and typed, “Hi Lacey, I wish it had, but this is the result of what you asked Reed to do.”
“Leah, that’s amazing. I was on my way to see you. Jimmy’s been driving everyone crazy over at the power plant you leased. He said the first stage, which is a mock of the Neurology Department, would be ready for practice just after midnight. He wants to know if you’ll be ready by then?”
“I will be. Maybe not as much as I will be tomorrow afternoon, but enough to move around a room.”
“This is your mother. What is this about a mock-up?”
“John, Jimmy and Johan have the plan to get me chipped again. It’s happening tomorrow afternoon. I need to practice getting into the place, so everything goes as planned tomorrow.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Not really, Mum. The world moves faster in the multiverse, and it’s already been nine virtual days. The next opportunity will be three virtual weeks later. I really need to find a way to get Gèng back. She has proof of what happened to me, and she understands what’s been going on in my brain better than anyone else. Besides, she’s also my friend, and I miss having her in my head.”
“Who’s going with you?”
“I don’t know who, except I’m certain John will be there. Mum, if I’m going to the old power station tonight, I probably won’t get back here until sometime on Sunday. Can you make sure I have enough clothes and food packed?”
“I will. I will be coming to the power station as well. I want to make sure you take care.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Not really.”
“Lacey here. Your mum’s a smart lady, Leah. I’m also letting Kevin and Aker know because they’ll be heading over as well. Jimmy suggested you have a sleep and be ready to leave here at twelve.”
“I have to see Aker soon, and then I’ll practice sparring again before I have a sleep.”
Lacey and Lin led Leah to Aker and together they spent five hours adding the sensors to Leah’s suit and working on the different options. In the end, Leah was able to wear the partially finished suit Aker had designed to her sparring session. Johan had logged out of the multiverse just in time to be her sparring partner. He walked into the practice room and saw Leah in the suit. He said, “Wow, that looks better than the last one. Can someone tell Leah I’m here?”
He was surprised to hear Leah’s voice come from the speaker around her neck. She said, “I suspect that was Johan. I’m ready when you are. The first thirty minutes will be making sure the suit is calibrated properly. Reed is communicating with Aker, and they’re making real-time adjustments for me. When you’re ready, throw me a fighting stick. Don’t warn me. You should have padding, but the suit is protection enough for me.”
Johan nodded, and Lacey said, “She’s still blind, Johan. She can’t see you nod.”
Leah tried to laugh but discovered that the sounds she made for laughing were connected in some way to the speech formation part of her brain, and that still wasn’t working. If she was honest, she didn’t ever think she’d get it back. She took a deep breath and waited to see if the combination of the different sensors would let her sense when the stick was thrown. With her perceptions accelerated, it seemed like forever to Leah, but it was less than two minutes when Johan lobbed the stick in her direction.
So far, Leon had been able to have five thousand dots delivered and expected another eight thousand to arrive over the next eighteen hours. He’d paid a premium for both the sensor dots and the delivery. On average each dot had cost him almost 150 VCr, and the delivery charges added another 25VCr per dot making the total spent so far, excluding the suit itself, over 2,275,000 VCr.
Even as Johan had moved his arm, the sensors registered the movement. Leah and Aker had utilised the different options to make up a new language for Leah’s body to recognise what was happening around her. Leah not only had to know where something was, but she also needed to know the direction of travel and the distance it was from her.
Aker’s first move when Leah had arrived was to discover Leah’s absolute threshold and then the difference threshold for each of the tactile modalities the inner section of the dots could use against Leah’s skin. The major modalities Aker had to work with were pressure, vibration, temperature and pain. With Reed’s assistance, they mapped the limits of Leah’s awareness of each sensation across her body. They were then able to assign the maximum and minimum values they could use. Next, they measured how large the difference between two stimuli needed to be for Leah to note the difference.
With Leah’s enhanced ability to perceive what was happening at her periphery, they discovered her difference threshold was ten times smaller than the best-recorded threshold in the literature and her range was almost double what was normal. Using a combination of pressure, vibration and temperature, they built up a map of the surrounding area on Leah’s skin. It took almost an hour for Reed to program the sensors and another hour before Leah could read the changing landscape of sensations on her skin with any accuracy. It was the third hour before she could visualise the changes across the tactile landscape as a movement toward her or away from her.
When Johan threw the stick, she sped up her perceptions momentarily. From the changes on her skin, she recognised the object approaching her was a fighting stick and that it was not perpendicular to the floor but arriving at an angle. One end was closer than the other. Leah had enough time to judge the angle just right and grab the stick. She continued moving and turned her catch into a ready stance.
Johan threw the other stick almost straight at her like a javelin, although slowly. The landscape on Leah’s body recognised the length using motion detected from near her head and at her feet. Additional information on velocity and angles were all etched onto her with the addition of using low levels of pain to add information. Leah turned sideways as the stick approached and grabbed it as it passed her right shoulder, before completing the move and coming to a second ready stance facing Johan.
Johan stepped forward and began to spar. He started slow, but realised after ten minutes that Leah’s confidence in what was happening had grown and she was keeping pace with him. Over the next hour he slowly increased the speed of his attacks until he was at ninety per cent of normal. Finally, worn out, he stepped back and said, “That’s it for me, Leah. Whatever magic you and Aker devised, it works. Can you go faster?”
Leah used her left hand to type and said, “I think so. I’ll need another practice tomorrow after the rest of the d
ots are added.”
Turning to where she knew Aker was, she typed, “Aker, that was amazing. I’m almost scared to take the suit off and lose all the data it gives me. Thank you.”
“You are welcome. I’m still shocked at the accuracy your skin can give you. You really need to thank Reed. Whoever they are, their skills are phenomenal.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to thank them.”
After Johan had left, Leah got out of the suit and back into her clothes. She reluctantly took off the gloves but was thrilled when Aker passed over a lightweight pair which she’d prepared for Leah. Leah then headed back to her room with Lin leading the way. After a shower, she was left in her room to sleep. Although she nodded off, her sleep was restless. Even so, she continued to try and rest until Lacey came to get her at midnight.
Diary - 22 December, 2073
Dr Roberts suggested I write down all my feelings about what happened. Then, she wants to ‘see me to talk’. I know it’s weird but suddenly words like ‘see’ and ‘talk’ annoy me. I know it’s irrational, and I sound like one of those precious people I often detested. Still, the truth is the constant uncritical, everyday reminders of my trauma hurt. I know people don’t mean anything negative, but they seem so unaware.
I understand that the words have much broader meanings than the ones I’m reacting to, but it doesn’t make it easier. Instead, it’s harder. Not only do I feel marginalised; I also add guilt to that feeling because it’s my over-sensitivity or fault that I feel that way. I feel like such a ‘princess’, I mean that in the bad, mockery-laden sense of the word.
If I’m honest I would have been even more annoyed if she’d written, ‘I want to sit down beside you to ensure we had a connection and then communicate in a written form about your feelings’.
OK, here goes.
…
Nope. I can’t write it down. I started a sentence a hundred times but had to delete each one. It’s not that the thoughts and feelings don’t have substance or because they lack cohesion. I can’t write them down because they are too raw, too real, too overwhelming. Nothing I could say would do them justice. I know I wasn’t raped, but I feel so ????. There isn’t a word to describe it. Violated is too clinical, defiled, that’s even worse. Abused? Molested? Dishonoured? Nothing does the feeling justice. What is a word that describes a mind-numbing feeling of betrayal, isolation, worthlessness, terror, rage and helplessness?
What is strange though, well, I think it is, is that I’m more traumatised, unravelled, embittered, and damaged by the attempted rape than I am by the injury to my head. Maybe it’s just that I’m naive. Suzluk, Meredith and Nathan all focussed on the actions of Earl and Billy more than any physical damage the taser would do. That, and the death of my dad. They all expected the violation to make me despair and give up more than the loss of function. What scares me is that Suzluk knows that. Where would an AI pick that up from? What experiences did he have, and why would the developers have let it happen?
Too tired.
12
December 23 2073
REAL WORLD
Just after midnight, Lacey entered Leah’s room and called her name. Leah was wearing the lightweight gloves, and she felt the pressure at her fingertips as her name was imprinted on the ends in braille. Even so, Lacey had to call three times before Leah sat up. Leah shook her head and slowly stood. She used both hands and typed, “Hello, I hope it wasn’t hard to wake me.”
Her voice came from the speaker, which Lacey picked up and handed to Leah to put around her neck. Lacey said, “No worries. Lacey here, I only had to call a few times.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you woke me when you did. I’d missed dreaming while in deep-sleep. I think I’ll be happy when I don’t dream anymore.”
“Leah, dreams sometimes help us deal with issues. It’s one way of learning to cope. I can’t remember you running away from anything before. What you need to do is take control of your dreams. Reassert that your life belongs to you. You’ve done it in real life, now do it in your subconscious.”
“I don’t know how to, Lacey. All I do is curl up in a ball absolutely terrified. I’m not even always sure it’s me that’s in the dream. Sometimes I’m Gèng and locked away in silence without any way of communicating, not even able to feel the touch of someone I love. I really hope that’s me being empathetic, rather than somehow sensing her pain.”
Lacey was quiet for a moment then said, “I’m trying to make sense of that. My PAI hasn’t developed a personality yet, and it’s hard to reconcile that with your experiences with Gèng.”
“Lacey, I’ve no idea if all PAI have the potential to develop a self-identity or not. I suspect Gèng’s rapid development in that area has something to do with the intensity of the first few days I had in the multiverse. She had the opportunity to interact with AI who had already developed a sense of self. When things slow down, and she’s back, you could ask Gèng if she has any advice.”
Before the conversation could continue, they arrived in the kitchen. After eating and dressing in a pair of jeans and a button shirt, Leah was helped down the stairs to a waiting vehicle. Aker was already in the car, and once Leah and Lacey were inside, it took them to the power station where Jimmy had put together a mock-up of the hospital’s neurology department.
John had arranged security and guards patrolled the perimeter. The car parked as close to the entrance to the main building as it could and Leah was quickly ushered inside. Once there, Lacey used her voice to direct Leah to the centre of the room. Jimmy was waiting with John and sitting near them was John Welford. As Lacey and Leah approached, Jimmy and John looked up when they heard Lacey’s voice.
Lacey said, “Leah, just in front of you are Jimmy and John, they are standing. A meter and a half to their left is John Welford. He’s sitting down.”
John said, “John speaking. Lacey mentioned Aker and you worked out a way for you to hear us. How accurate is it?”
“It’s very good with words. I sent a message to Reed, and he sent an update which has voice recognition capabilities, so you don’t need to identify yourself. Once the AI knows your voice, it will identify you before sharing the words.”
“Jimmy: Do we need to talk slower?”
“No. The AI sends the braille at the pace we’ve set. I’m generally able to keep up, although if it’s a long sentence or paragraph, there may be a slight delay.”
“John: We’re still working on putting together a full-sized model of the chimney, but the room you’ll enter looks accurate to what Welford described. How do you want to practice?”
“Let me start without the suit. Walk me around the entire room first by leading me. After a few times, use your voice and see if I can do it without the suit. When I can do that, then I’ll put on the suit Aker’s making. Is Brett Elliot here?”
“Jimmy: He is, his folks let him help out. I shuffled him off when you arrived.”
“Bring him in. I don’t want to use him on this job, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use it as a learning opportunity. If he’s already been around the room a few times, then have him put on a blindfold.”
“Jimmy: Thank you. I don’t want to use him either, but it is a good learning experience, and learning with you will make his day. You’re his hero.”
Leah tried to blow a raspberry using her tongue and lips only to discover that the ability to make that sound came from the destroyed part of her brain. She could eat, but she couldn’t speak, whistle, click her tongue or blow a raspberry. She tried exhaling through pursed lips and found she could, but when she tried to whistle, she couldn’t. Frustrated, she typed, “Jimmy, I tried to blow a raspberry at you, but apparently that’s language and I can’t. Please take it as if I did it.”
“Burning out a chip is barbaric.”
“Jimmy: That was Welford. He’s horrified at what happened.”
“Lacey, please point me in his direction.”
Leah felt herself being turned slightly
and then fingers pulled on her chin to lower her gaze. She typed, “John Welford, they tell me you’ve learned your lesson—I hope it’s true. I doubt the voice you hear shows my disgust but be assured it is there. What you did when you stole my images for your personal fantasies is just as barbaric in my eyes. At least the people who did this valued me enough to see me as a threat. All you saw was a piece of meat, a thing, something for you to find pleasure in before being thrown away. I understand people think what you did was harmless and victimless, but that is a lie they tell themselves. You made me feel degraded, used, and dirty.”
When she’d finished, she turned back to where she thought John was and said, “Shall we start?”
The entire secure area of the neurology department was over six hundred square metres and had a variety of rooms, computers, locked doors, desks and chairs. It took Leah and Brett until seven o’clock before they could both walk through the area without hitting anything. Although Leah had managed to weave her way through in several hours, she practised until she could use her picks to unlock each of the doors and find the data entry points on each of the desks. She insisted that Brett be able to do this as well. While she didn’t want him to go with them, she thought the experience would help him later.
During one of the short breaks, Lacey said, “Are you sure it’s a good idea helping Brett move down this life path?”
“That’s not what I’m doing. I’m giving him the tools to make a choice. The perseverance needed to do this will help him do whatever he wants to. When this is over, I’ll spend some time with him and encourage him to use his drive for something of greater worth. I see another John, Johan or Lacey in him. You are all good people, the best, even though you chose this ‘life path’. When you’ve been given a chance to help someone else, me in this case, you grabbed it with both hands. I’ve never regretted learning the skills even if I stopped my thieving ways.”
