Death Trap

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “Without,” Rawling said. “You know how expensive the platform buggies are. They take a lot of room in cargo, cost millions to produce, and consume too much valuable energy when we run them. What does it take for a human to survive outside the dome without a platform buggy?”

  “Humans need oxygen and water and protection from heat and cold.”

  “How do they get all that now?”

  “Big bulky space suits,” I said. “And whatever oxygen and water each person can carry.”

  He asked, “How long can a human last out there until he or she needs to return to the dome?”

  “Supposedly a day,” I said. “Only a day. But that’s why we’re here. To get the planet ready for humans to live outside the dome. So that later—”

  “Later is 100 or 200 years away. Meanwhile, the entire planet needs to be explored.”

  “Do you really have a secret? Or are you doing this to me to keep me interested?”

  Rawling didn’t smile. “Machines. Robots. They don’t need oxygen or water or heat. They don’t take up a lot of cargo space on ships. For the cost of one platform buggy, you can have 100 robots. Robots are ideal, except for one thing.” He paused. “Robots don’t have human brains. A computer as big as a spaceship can’t think and react the way a human can. So we can’t begin to send robots out to explore the planet unless they are controlled by—and think like—humans. Are you with me so far?”

  “Yes, but it hasn’t been much of a secret. You said—”

  “Tell me what you know about Earth labs that grow skin and bone for people.”

  “What does this have to do with—?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Sure, I’ll tell you,” I said. “You and Mom made me study it as part of a school assignment.”

  “So you understand that 50 years ago, burn victims had no chance of healing their skin. But now doctors can take a piece of the victim’s skin and grow it into big patches, just like growing a plant, then replace the damaged skin with the new skin.”

  “Yes, I know. Remember? You made me study it for three months as—”

  “You know about replacement bones and replacement organs and how far that has come since the year 2000. And that doctors have learned how to grow biological plastics right inside the body. They have used steel and cable to rebuild joints. They’ve found ways to join all sorts of artificial materials to human body parts.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” I said, trying hard not to get impatient. “Come on. What’s the secret?”

  “Put it together,” Rawling said slowly and quietly. “The need for robots with human brains, along with advances in medicine. Add one more thing. Then you’ll have your secret.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “One more thing,” I repeated. “I don’t get it.”

  “Virtual reality,” Rawling said. “You’ve been in that robot simulation program two hours a day since you were eight years old. Tell me what you know about virtual reality.”

  “Well,” I started slowly, “I put on the surround-sight helmet. It gives me a 3-D view of a scene on a computer program. The helmet is wired so when I turn my head, it directs the computer program to shift the scene as if I were there in real life. Or in the case of the robot training, it shifts to whatever video lens I want, giving me the chance to see in four directions, one direction at a time.”

  “Go on,” Rawling said.

  “Sounds come in like real sounds. Because I’m wearing a wired jacket and gloves, the arms and hands I see in my surround-sight picture move wherever I move my own arms and hands.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “Good? I’ll bet any five-year-old Earth kid knows this stuff. What about this secr—?”

  “Will you agree with me that the virtual-reality helmet and jacket are just extensions of your brain?”

  He must have seen my puzzled look. He pointed at the telescope. “Just like this is an extension of your brain. You can’t actually be on a moon of Jupiter, but the telescope lets your eyes go there, and your eyes show the moon to your brain.”

  “That’s different,” I said. “A moon of Jupiter is real. Virtual reality is just a computer program.”

  “Your brain doesn’t know the difference. Not unless you tell your brain with your thoughts.”

  “Rawling,” I said, “if you’re trying to confuse me, it’s working.”

  “Stick with me,” he said. “This is important. Does your brain see?”

  I thought about it. “No. My eyes see.”

  “You got it. Your eyes deliver information to your brain. When you look through the telescope, your optic nerves take the image and fire it into your brain. Your brain translates the information. But your brain doesn’t see. It relies on the extensions of the brain. Your eyes. Your telescope. Or the extension of virtual reality.”

  I was beginning to understand.

  “Your brain doesn’t see anything,” Rawling said. “It doesn’t hear anything. It doesn’t smell anything. It doesn’t taste anything. It doesn’t feel anything. Your brain is this incredible jumble of stuff packed into your skull that translates the information delivered to it by nerve endings. Some nerve endings are attached to the back of your eyes. Or to your ear canals. To sensors in your nose or on your tongue. To nerve endings in your skin and bones.”

  “In other words,” I said, “you’re telling me the body is like a virtual-reality suit wrapped around the brain.”

  “Exactly!” He smiled. “After all, it’s like God designed an amazing 24-hour-a-day virtual-reality suit that moves on two legs, has two arms to pick things up, can feed and repair itself, and is equipped to give information through all five senses. Except instead of taking you through virtual reality, a made-up world, your body takes you through the real world.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” I said. “But I’ll agree with you. Now will you finally tell me the secret?”

  “Soon,” Rawling said. “But give me one more minute.”

  “One minute.”

  “It takes time for the brain to learn how to handle all the information delivered by the body,” he said, excitedly falling into the teacher role. “For proof, all you need to do is watch a baby as it grows. Babies are clumsy and don’t know how to work their bodies. Or how to understand the sights and sounds that their eyes and ears deliver to their new brains. But slowly, their brains figure out what information is being delivered, and babies begin to understand the world around them through the nerves of their eyes and ears and nose and tongue and skin.”

  “I know. I know,” I said. “For my first two years in controlling a virtual-reality robot in the computer program, you always laughed and said that except for smelly diapers, I was just like a newborn baby.”

  “Because you were,” Rawling said in a serious tone. “Your brain was learning to translate new information. Only this new information didn’t come from your body but from the virtual-reality equipment, which was just like the extension of your body. You were clumsy at first, but quickly you got better until you now handle that virtual-reality robot just as if it were your own body. Learning those controls was like learning the controls of a complicated computer game.” He took a deep breath. “So you’re still with me after all that?”

  “Yes.”

  Rawling took another deep breath. “Let me ask you this. If the information was delivered instantly, would it make a difference to your brain if the information reached it through eyes attached to your head, or eyes attached to a video lens a thousand miles or a million miles away?”

  “It would,” I said, after thinking about it for a few seconds. “Because your hands have to be near your eyes to pick something up.”

  “What if your hands were also a thousand miles or a million miles away?”

  “Ha-ha,” I said. “I know your secret. You’re crazy. Like anybody could have arms a million miles long.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “It’s the brain that matters and how it deals with the informati
on. If your eyes, ears, and hands are just extensions of your brain, it doesn’t matter how far away all those parts are, as long as two things are possible. First, these extensions instantly deliver information to the brain. And second, the brain is instantly able to direct the extensions. Will you agree with me?”

  I looked at Rawling strangely. He was waiting as if my answer was very important.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess you’re right. It wouldn’t matter.”

  “If it doesn’t matter, you could explore Mars. You could go out to the asteroids. You could see a moon of Jupiter. Not by telescope but by actually being there through extensions of your eyes and ears and the rest of your senses in the body of a robot. Would you like that?”

  “You know I hate this wheelchair,” I said. “But what you’re talking about, that can’t happen. It’s only theory.”

  Rawling looked up through the dome at the stars. Then back at me. “It’s no longer theory,” he said softly. “It’s you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “I promised your mother I wouldn’t say anything else until we got together with her,” Rawling said as he got out of his chair. “She’s waiting for us in your minidome.”

  “You can’t leave me hanging like this.”

  “It won’t be long,” he said. “Let me get you down there.”

  Normally, I didn’t let anyone push my wheelchair. I mean, did other people ask for help when they walked? This time, though, I was too distracted, wondering about what Rawling had just told me.

  Rawling wheeled me away from the telescope and took us down the catwalk to the second level. As he pushed me along the second level walkway, he grunted. “You must be getting heavier,” he said. “I don’t ever remember it being this difficult to move you around.”

  “Lack of oxygen,” I said. “It’s been getting tougher and tougher for me to wheel around too.” But now I didn’t care about that. I wanted to know more about the virtual-reality program. “Will you at least give me a hint about this robot stuff?”

  “You won’t have to wait long. Trust me, for as long as this secret has been inside you, another few minutes won’t matter.”

  “Inside me?”

  “Inside you. But I won’t say another word until we meet your mother.”

  He kept pushing. When we reached the ramp, he guided me down to the main level. In another couple of minutes, we met my mother in our minidome.

  “An X-ray,” Rawling said as he handed me a big envelope. “An X-ray of your back and shoulders. From this afternoon’s checkup.”

  I glanced up at him.

  He sat in one chair on the other side of the minidome’s common area. Mom sat on another.

  “First of all,” Rawling began, “you should know that we weren’t going to tell you this until you were 18, the age of legal adulthood on Earth. A long time ago it was decided that when you reached that age, you would be given the choice to go ahead with the experiment or not. Except now, with the dome losing oxygen …”

  He didn’t have to finish for me. What he meant was that I wouldn’t reach my 18th birthday.

  “Anyway,” he said, “look at the X-ray.”

  I did, opening the envelope and holding the sheet up to the light. The bones were gray-white against the darker film of the X-ray sheet. I could easily see the collar bones and shoulder blades and the top of my spinal column and the bottom of my skull.

  “See where your neck is?” Rawling asked. “You’ll have to look closely. See that short, dark rod, hardly thicker than a needle?”

  I squinted at the X-ray and finally nodded. It was wedged directly into my spinal column at the bottom of my neck, just above the top of my shoulder blades. It looked like thousands of tiny hairs stuck out of the end of the needle into the middle of my spinal column.

  “That’s been there since you were a year old,” Rawling said.

  “What is it?” I asked. “How did it get there?”

  Mom spoke very quietly. “It got there as part of an operation. I agreed to let them attach it to your spine. It was a very difficult decision, one I struggled with making. In the end, I felt I had no choice. I hope you will forgive me.”

  “Forgive you? But—”

  “Tyce, it made things very hard here at the dome when we discovered I was going to have a baby. Everything for this project had been planned down to the last detail. You weren’t one of those details. Director Steven was furious, but he couldn’t send me back. They needed a plant biologist too badly to begin experimental work on hybrids for Mars. If I went back to Earth, with the time it takes to travel back and forth, it would put them years behind as they waited for a replacement. Director Steven threatened to send you back instead, as soon as you were born. But I knew the journey in a spaceship would kill you. Babies can’t handle the stresses of g-forces and orbit shifts. So when he offered me a trade, I accepted it.” Her gaze lowered to her hands.

  “A trade?”

  “Remember,” she said, “I loved you too much to send you away and risk your death.”

  “A trade?” I asked again.

  Mom hesitated. “Director Steven said everyone on the dome project needed to have a purpose,” she finally answered, staring straight at me as if judging my reaction to her news. “Including you. So I agreed to the operation on your spine. The next ship brought in a neurosurgeon and all the experimental equipment needed. After the operation, the neurosurgeon went out on the next flight. He was paid six years’ salary for all the time he spent in travel. But no one cared about the money, because it was decided that you could be the one to revolutionize space exploration.”

  “Me?” I said.

  “As part of the long-term plan,” Rawling said, “scientists had been hoping to use robots to explore Mars and do work that humans couldn’t, based on virtual-reality extensions. The next stage in their experiments was to hook up the human nervous system directly into a robot’s computer drive. They were hoping a human brain could control the robot.”

  In a flash, I understood why Rawling had always examined my back so closely during checkups. Why he’d been worried about my back after I fell out of the wheelchair the night before. Why he’d spent two hours a day since I was eight Earth years old, training me in the virtual-reality robot program. Why Mom and Rawling had made me learn everything possible about human implants.

  “The needle in my back,” I queried, holding up the X-ray against the light. “All those things at the end of the needle that look like fine hairs. Those are biological implants that have grown into my nerves.”

  Mom and Rawling nodded.

  “Plastic fibers with a core that transmits tiny impulses of electricity,” Rawling said. “You are the first person to get this implant. They hadn’t planned on trying it in a human on Mars for at least another 10 years.”

  “Wow!” I couldn’t keep excitement out of my voice. If I was right … “And the end of the needle coming out of my spinal column,” I said, “it will attach directly to a computer input, right?”

  Again they nodded.

  “It will take a painless minor operation to cut open the skin and add an antenna plug to the needle,” Rawling said.

  “It will barely stick out of your back.”

  “Double wow!” I said. Now everything Rawling had just talked about at the telescope made sense. The need for robots powered by human brains. Medical advances over the last 50 years. Virtual-reality extensions of the human brain. “You mean I can be hooked up to a robot?”

  “If it works,” Rawling said flatly. But he didn’t seem happy. “Remember, no one has tried this before.”

  My mind raced. The senses of the robot will be an extension of my body! Just by using my brain, I’ll be able to travel without my wheelchair! I’m going to be the one to revolutionize space exploration! The places I can go in a robot’s body are limitless. I can …

  Tears rolled down Mom’s face.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, puzzled. “This is great news. What’s there
to forgive you for?”

  Mom didn’t wipe away the tears. “Tyce, I’ve lied to you about one thing since you were old enough to talk … and it has pained me to do so. I have agonized over my decision ever since, wondering if I made the right one—letting my baby become an experiment. So here’s the truth. You didn’t lose the use of your legs because of the way you were born.”

  I stared at her. I didn’t understand.

  “It happened during the operation,” she finished. “When the neurosurgeon inserted the rod into your spine, he accidentally cut some of the nerves that go to your legs.”

  CHAPTER 13

  When Mom asked me to write this Mars journal, I thought it was going to be about living and dying under the dome. Instead, it has become learning about myself.

  First of all, I’m scared. And it’s been that way ever since two days ago, when I learned the truth about my handicap. At first I was excited about the thought of zooming around in a robot’s body. But then reality settled in. This afternoon I’m going to be hooked up to the computer drive of a robot through the nerves of my spinal column. Rawling says it should work, but no one has ever tried it before. He says something might go wrong. It could do something to my brain if the electrical circuits haven’t fused properly to my body with the biological plastic connections.

  I say, what does it matter since I might die anyway from the oxygen problem in this dome?

  I’ve also learned I’m crippled not from birth, as I’ve thought all these years, but because an experimental operation went wrong when I was a baby.

  I don’t know whether to be mad or sad about this. Or happy that I’ve got a chance to do something in space that no other person in history has been able to try.

  Either way, it won’t change the fact that my legs are useless.

  I stopped typing at the keyboard. I reached for my red juggling balls from my wheelchair pouch and tossed them in the air. My hands automatically juggled while my brain thought. I needed to comfort myself with juggling because if I let myself think about what I didn’t want to think about, I’d go crazy.