by Kevin Brooks
In the stairwell on the twentieth floor, three guys were slumped against the wall, puffing away on crack pipes. They were all about nineteen or twenty, and they were all totally wasted.
I had to step over them to get past.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I just need to —”
“Hey, fuck,” one of them slurred at me, reaching out a grimy hand. “Gimme your —”
I flicked at his hand, my head turning on the electric, and I gave him just enough of a shock to surprise him, maybe just sting him a little. He jerked his hand away, cursing sharply, and at the same time he dropped his pipe from the other hand. While he scrabbled around on the ground, desperately looking for his pipe — and simultaneously waggling his shocked fingers in the air — I stepped past him and climbed the last three flights to the twenty-third floor.
No matter how weird and scary this iPhone-in-the-brain stuff was — and, believe me, it was incredibly weird and scary — there was no doubt that it had its advantages. I just had to hope that the more I thought about it, the more I tried to rationalize it, the less weird and scary it would become.
Fat chance.
The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain. It has replaced part of my memory, storing numbers and addresses that I once would have taxed my brain with. It harbors my desires . . . Friends joke that I should get the iPhone implanted into my brain. But . . . all this would do is speed up the processing and free up my hands. The iPhone is part of my mind already . . . the world is not serving as a mere instrument for the mind. Rather, the relevant parts of the world have become parts of my mind. My iPhone is not my tool, or at least it is not wholly my tool. Parts of it have become parts of me.
David Chalmers
Foreword to Supersizing the Mind (2008) by Andy Clark
I spent the rest of that night lying on my bed in my room, with my eyes closed, looking inside my head. It was a relatively quiet night (Crow Town is never completely silent), and I was so used to the distant sounds of the street down below anyway — the raised voices, the muffled music, the revving engines and screeching tires of (probably stolen) cars — it was all just a nothing-noise to me. The flat was fairly peaceful, too — just the soft tap-tapping of Gram in her room, and the occasional whispered curse. I could smell the faint drift of cigar smoke from her room, and it was easy to imagine her hunched over her laptop, tapping away like crazy, with a small cigar smoking away in her mouth, the ash occasionally dropping onto her clothes, burning little holes in her shirt, her trousers . . . that’s what she’d be cursing about.
Anyway, it was quiet enough for me to just lie there in the darkness and try to make sense of the weird and scary cyber-world that was growing inside my head.
It was all too much for me at first. What I knew, what I sensed, what I had access to . . . it was simply too vast, too alien, too unbelievably colossal to comprehend. It was like suddenly realizing that you know everything there is to know. I could see it, hear it, find it, know it . . . I could reach out to anywhere in the world and know whatever I wanted to know. It was all there: information, pictures, letters, numbers, words, symbols, faces, voices, bodies, hearts, thoughts, places . . . everything. But it was far too much all at once. Too much to know. So I tried to concentrate, to focus . . . I tried to make some order out of the chaos. And the best way to do that, it seemed to me, was to go back to the beginning. And the beginning of all this was the iPhone.
Everything I needed to know about iPhones — or everything I already knew — came to me in an instant:
The iPhone is an Internet and multimedia enabled smartphone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPhone functions as a camera phone (also including text messaging and visual voicemail), a portable media player (equivalent to a video iPod), and an Internet client (with email, web browsing, and WiFi connectivity) using the phone’s multi-touch screen to render a virtual keyboard in lieu of a physical keyboard. The first-generation phone (known as the Original) was quad-band GSM with EDGE; the second-generation phone (known as 3G) added UMTS with 3.6 Mbps HSDPA; the third generation adds support for 7.2 Mbps HSDPA downloading but remains limited to 384 Kbps uploading as Apple had not implemented the HSPA protocol. The iPhone 3GS was announced on June 8, 2009, and has improved performance, a camera with more megapixels and video capability, and voice control.
Manufacturer
Apple Inc.
Type
Candybar smartphone
Release date
Original: June 29, 2007
3G: July 11, 2008
3GS: June 19, 2009
Units sold
21.17 million (as of Q2 2009)
Operating system
iPhone OS 3.1.2 (build 7D11), released October 8, 2009
Power
Original: 3.7 V 1400 mAh
3G: 3.7 V 1150 mAh
3GS: 3.7 V 1219 mAh
Internal rechargeable non-removable lithium-ion polymer battery
CPU
Original & 3G: Samsung 32-bit RISC ARM 1176JZ(F)-S v1.0
620 MHz underclocked to 412 MHz
PowerVR MBX Lite 3D GPU
3GS: Samsung S5PC100 ARM Cortex-A8
833MHz underclocked to 600 MHz
PowerVR SGX GPU
Storage capacity
Flash memory
Original: 4, 8 & 16 GB
3G: 8 & 16 GB
3GS: 16 & 32 GB
Memory
Original & 3G: 128 MB eDRAM
3GS: 256 MB eDRAM
Display
320 × 480 px, 3.5 in (89 mm), 2:3 aspect ratio, 18-bit (262, 144-color) LCD at 163 pixels per inch (ppi)
Input
Multi-touch touchscreen display, headset controls, proximity and ambient light sensors, 3-axis accelerometer
3GS also includes: digital compass
Camera
Original & 3G: 2.0 megapixels with geotagging
3GS: 3.0 megapixels with video (VGA at 30fps), geotagging, and automatic focus, white balance & exposure
Connectivity
WiFi (802.11 b/g), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (3GS: 2.1), USB 2.0/Dock connector
Quad band GSM 850 900 1800 1900 MHz GPRS/EDGE
3G also includes: A-GPS; Tri band UMTS/HSDPA 850, 1900, 2100 MHz
3GS also supports: 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
Online services
iTunes Store, App Store, MobileMe
Dimensions
Original:
4.5 in (115 mm) (h)
2.4 in (61 mm) (w)
0.46 in (11.6 mm) (d)
3G & 3GS:
4.55 in (115.5 mm) (h)
2.44 in (62.1 mm) (w)
0.48 in (12.3 mm) (d)
Weight
Original & 3GS: 4.8 oz (135 g)
3G: 4.7 oz 133 g
Actually, that was far more information than I needed, and most of it didn’t make much sense to me anyway. But it confirmed what I’d already assumed: I had WiFi capability, I could connect to the web. I had access to every single website in the world, which is a lot of websites:
Web pages in the world, August 2005:
19.2 billion pages were indexed
by Yahoo!
as of August 2005.
Websites in the world, August 2005:
70,392,567 websites were indexed
by Netcraft
as of August 2005.
Web pages per website:
273 (rounding to the nearest whole number).
Web pages in the world, February 2007:
multiplying our estimate of the number of web pages per website by Netcraft’s February 2007 count of websites, we arrive at 29.7 billion pages on the World Wide Web as of February 2007.
And there was even more. There were databanks, secure sites, programs, and websites that were supposed to be inaccessible to unauthorized users, but my iBrain knew how to get into them.
My iBrain, my iSelf . . .
My i.
What else did it allow me to do? Well, I cou
ld send and receive texts and calls, of course . . . and, what’s more, I seemed to be able to phone and text with complete anonymity. So, if I wanted to, I could send texts and make calls without anyone knowing who they were from. And I could hear other calls, too. I could access other mobiles — stored texts, call logs, address books . . . whatever was there. I knew it all. I knew where the phones were. I could either triangulate their signals or, with a lot of the new phones, simply locate them via their GPS chips. I could reach out into the radio-waved air and pick out a single specific telephone conversation from among all the millions of others . . .
What else?
I could take pictures — click.
Make videos — click, whirr.
Watch videos, watch TV, play games.
I could see every email on every computer and every phone in the world.
I could download everything downloadable . . .
I could do virtually anything.
I could overdose on information.
I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness for a while, emptying my head of everything. I was drained, exhausted. My skull ached. I was excited, confused, bewildered, thrilled . . .
This . . . whatever and however it was . . .
This was awe-inspiring.
A radio-controlled clock inside my head (receiving its time signal over the air from Anthorn in Cumbria [MSF 60 kHz]) told me that it was 23:32:43.
I lifted my hands and held them in front of my face. A soft glow was emanating from my skin — a gentle, very pale, almost purplish light. I watched, oddly unsurprised, as the glow started to shimmer, and my skin began pulsating again . . . radiating, floating, swirling with the essence of everything. I didn’t have to see the rest of my body to know that it was happening all over — I could feel it. And now that I was witnessing it up close for the first time, I knew what it was. It was everything, the same kind of everything that I had in my head: 30 billion web pages, galaxies of words and pictures and sounds and voices . . . all of it shimmering in and over and under my flesh.
And now I could control it.
All I had to do was switch something off in my head (I didn’t know what it was), and my skin would fade back to normal; switch it on again, and the cyber-galaxies came back.
I was learning.
At 00:49:18 I learned that Lucy hadn’t used her mobile since the attack, she hadn’t sent any texts or emails, and that she had a Facebook page but there hadn’t been any activity on it for months. No messages, no comments, no status updates, nothing. In fact, her Facebook profile was virtually blank — no friends, no photos, no videos, no favorites, no information at all. Just her screen name — aGirl — and that was it.
At 01:16:08 I learned how to hack into the personal computers of CID detectives at Southwark Borough police station, and I found out that three individuals suspected of carrying out the rape and assault of Lucy Walker were still under investigation, but that the senior investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Robert Hall, was not expecting any imminent arrests.
The three individuals named were: Eugene “Yoyo” O’Neil, Paul “Cutz” Adebajo, and DeWayne Firman.
Other individuals suspected of being involved, but with no evidence against them, were Yusef Hashim, Nathan “Fly” Craig, and Carl “Trick” Patrick.
Between 01:49:18 and 02:37:08 I learned (by experimenting with both a penknife and an old toy gun that fired plastic pellets) that when my iSkin was turned on, my whole body was shielded with an electric force field.
And at 02:57:44 I learned (from an article called “Electricity is Human Thinking,” by H. Bernard Wechsler) that:
Every thought, feeling and action in Homo sapiens originates from the electrical signals emitted by our brain cell circuits . . . Remember that your brain communicates with each cell of your body through electrical impulses (hormones, enzymes and neuropeptides). Further, we believe Consciousness is electrically producing mental-imagery in the occipital lobe and precuneous of your brain. Our commonality with our computer, TV, video game player, and telephone is in the use of electricity and electromagnetic fields as a source of energy.
Electricity is the movement of a charge down a wire. In our neurons (nerve cells) the electric signal moves in the form of an Action-Potential. Inside the nerve cells is a negative charge produced by nano pumps moving charged Ions out of our cells. We are constantly involved in polarizing and depolarizing Ions through Gates in our nerve membranes causing our muscle contractions for locomotion. Impulses are sent electrically from the Brain to all parts of the body through these Action-Potentials by signaling our Central Nervous System.
Membranes have two types of proteins: Ion channels for Sodium (Na) outside the cell, and Potassium (K) inside the cell. When the nerve cell receives a stimulus, it opens some of its Ion channels. The second protein is called Transporters. ATP transports chemical energy within the cells for Metabolism.
And although that didn’t explain how the shattered fragments of a 3.7 V 1219 mAh lithium-ion polymer battery could meld with the organic electrical energy of my brain (or my body) to produce a level of power that was above and beyond the linear sum of the two original powers, a level of power that was sufficient to produce a powerful electric shock and create a protective force field . . .
Well, actually, it didn’t explain anything. But, to be honest, I’d pretty much given up on explanations by then. I mean, Spider-Man never bothered too much with explanations, did he? He just got bitten by a genetically engineered spider, acquired his super-spider-powers, frowned about them for a minute or two, and that was pretty much it. He didn’t spend hours and hours trying to understand them, did he?
“Spider-Man?” I heard myself mutter. “Jesus Christ . . .”
I couldn’t believe that I was comparing myself to a fictional superhero. It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
At 03:04:50, after forcing myself to stop thinking about the reality and non-reality of superheroes, I intercepted a video being sent from a mobile phone to Lucy’s mobile. It came from a girl called Nadia Moore who lived in Eden House, and she’d added a text message to the video. The message read: jst 2 rmind u agn wat a fuckin hor ur.
I had a pretty good idea of what the video was going to show, and I didn’t want to watch it, but I knew that I had to. So after I’d blocked it from reaching Lucy’s phone, I braced myself, pressed the play button inside my head, and set about watching a blurred and shaky video of the attack on Lucy and Ben.
I can’t describe the worst of what I saw.
There aren’t words sick enough.
I cried so much it hurt.
I couldn’t watch all of the video — there were some scenes that were simply too vile . . . too heartbreaking to witness — but after watching most of it, I knew that the police were only partly right. The six individuals they suspected of being involved — O’Neil, Adebajo, Firman, Hashim, Craig, and Patrick — they were all definitely there, and it was definitely the first three who’d done all the really bad stuff. But they weren’t the only ones who’d been there. There were others. Some of them had been there from the start, and others had come later, in response to texts and calls from both Carl Patrick and Nadia Moore, who apparently were boyfriend and girlfriend (and, unbelievably, it was Nadia who’d actually done the filming). Even while the attack was going on, they were sending out texts and calling their friends, inviting them to come along — homporn 4u!! lovit haha! . . . cum c da fun! — as if it was some kind of circus or something. And their friends did come along. By the time O’Neil and the others had finished with Lucy and Ben, there must have been at least six or seven others in the flat.
Some of them had their faces covered, so I couldn’t make out all of them from the video, but I recognized most of them. Jayden Carroll was there, and a couple of brothers from Addington called Big and Little Jones. There were a few youngish kids — no more than twelve or thirteen years old — who I didn’t know, but I’d seen them around. And Davey Carr w
as there, too. It was Davey who’d taken the iPhone out of Ben’s pocket and thrown it out the window. He was laughing when he did it.
I wanted to delete the video, to erase it from my head. I didn’t want it to be there anymore . . . I didn’t want it to exist.
But I couldn’t delete it.
Not yet.
I might need it.
Inside my head, I reached out in anger to Carl Patrick’s mobile and instantly sent a text from his phone to his girlfriend’s, Nadia Moore. leona, I wrote, gotta cu agin soon. ur SO xxxx hot!! trkxxxxx
It was a pathetic thing to do, I knew that. It was petty and stupid and utterly pointless, and it didn’t make me feel the slightest bit better. But what the hell? It didn’t make me feel any worse either.
At 03:41:29 Lucy logged on to her Facebook profile, went to her notes, and started writing. As far as I could tell, it was the first time she’d ever written anything in her notes. I knew that I shouldn’t be spying on her, and I did feel kind of sneaky and ashamed of myself for doing it, but however much guilt I felt, my desire to know how she felt, to know what she was thinking, was that much stronger.
She didn’t write very much.
i don’t know why i’m writing this, she began, cos i know nobody’s ever gonna read it, but i think i just need to write down what i’m feeling. i need to tell someone even if it’s only me. i feel dead. i hurt. nothing’s ever going to be good again. nothing means anything anymore. all the good things are gone.
