“My . . . feet . . . hurt . . .”
CHAPTER 11
“Mr. Goldman, you are forcing me to repeat myself.”
“I apologize, Dr. Killian. You said that the major surgery has been accomplished?”
“That was in my report. Yes.”
“What stage is Colonel Austin in? I mean right now.”
Dr. Killian consulted notes on his desk. “It is what Dr. Wells calls orientation. Their relationship is remarkable. The legs and the arm have been attached, as you know. We have already gone through a series of adjustments. Electrical feedback, servomotor trim, as we call it. There have been difficulties in the interface of the two limbs, the natural and the bionics. None of these was unexpected. We have not yet applied the full pressure on the joining interface. That comes soon. What we are doing now, what Dr. Wells is doing, I should say, is going over detailed transparent models of different systems. With Colonel Austin, of course. We have prepared full working models, assemblies and subassemblies. Dr. Wells feels it is imperative for Austin to understand every last element of his bionics reconstruction, and this understanding is expected to assist his control.”
“I agree with him,” Goldman said.
“I’m sure he will be pleased to hear that.”
“I’m just as sure Dr. Wells doesn’t much give a damn whether or not I agree,” Goldman said. “How are these sessions set up? Between the colonel and Dr. Wells, I mean.”
“They meet in Colonel Austin’s room. It’s really a large chamber with movable walls. All the equipment we need is therefore within easy reach.”
“Anyone else with Dr. Wells?”
“Miss Manners, of course. And Miss Norris is often there.”
“She’s the lab technician, isn’t she?”
“She is also an RN, Mr. Goldman.”
“Yes, sir. I was aware of that. She’s also much taken with the colonel, isn’t she?”
“You seem to have your sources of information, Mr. Goldman.”
“Doctor, as you know, Smythe is our representative. He needed to go no further than listening to conversation in the dining room to know that. I assure you we have no spy ring in your hospital here. As I explained before, Dr. Killian, we will not interfere. But I would like to sit in on several of these sessions—I presume they’re preliminary to the actual walking tests?—so that I can get a feel for how things are going.”
“You are not a member of the staff and that is interference. What if a question is directed to you?”
Goldman smiled. “Then I will answer it, Dr. Killian. Between us—and I would like this to go no further than yourself or Dr. Wells—I have my masters in electronics and computer systems.”
Killian nodded. “You are rather an unusual man, Mr. Goldman.”
“Yes, Dr. Killian. I am.”
They were surrounded by transparent models of human systems—torsos, limbs, the head, and brain. Different models for nerve networks, alive with flashing lights representing in slow motion the path of electrical currents. Others indicated muscle fiber, tendons, sinews, bones. Still others were two and three times normal life size to emphasize particular areas of the body, the switching points, articulated joints, points of flexibility and where extra loads were born. The walls were hung with charts and diagrams. There were individual models of knee and wrist joints, ankles and elbows, all several times life size, all intended to bring out certain specific areas and methods of operation.
There was another group of limbs. These differed from the representations of the human anatomy. These were the bionics systems, and they too were broken down into separate units and enlarged. Where there were diagrammatic representations for the human limbs, the bionics units seemed to be from the guidance systems of missiles or the electronic innards of spacecraft destined for distant planets. Working models of sensors, wire connections, solenoids, amplification systems, cables and pulleys; they were all there, the bionics equivalents to their predecessor limb.
The models, working systems, charts, diagrams, and stacks of manuals and schematics were placed in a wide semicircle around the long, wide room, which had been expanded to its present size by removing ceiling-to-floor partitions. In the center of the room was Steve Austin in his special bed. There was a difference in his appearance. The man who had lost both legs and his left arm now showed the full limbs of a normal person. A dark patch still covered his left eye, and his hair remained cropped almost to the point of a shaven skull. Otherwise there seemed little resemblance between this man and the same Steve Austin who had been here months before, with only a single limb to his body.
Several tables had been placed about the bed, and behind these sat or stood a dozen men. Dr. Rudy Wells was one. Oscar Goldman, introduced as an electronics specialist in sensing systems, was another. The others were specialists in bionics systems, stress equipment, mechanical drives. They were all members of the team that had spent months working together in the attempt to make the quantum jump into the future. The man about whom they stood would be the measure of their success or failure. Moments earlier the room had been dark, the assembled group watching an animated film following the passage of electrical signals through a human system into a bionics system. It had been a film intended to show one man what he had become.
“All right,” Wells was saying, “let’s consider this a working review. Question-and-answer time if necessary. Set?” Steve acknowledged with a curt nod. He had become unusually quiet, not so much withdrawn as deeply involved in his own thoughts, as if he were working overtime to assimilate the staggering changes to his system that one day might be commonplace, but which at this moment were unprecedented.
“We could have replaced your arm with a human graft, could have effected nerve and other connections, regained circulation. Aside from the rejection factor, of course, but that’s really the least of it. The point is that we would remain within far more unknowns than are presented by the bionics systems. At this point, to add this on to the other factors, whatever we could do would be partial. I said we could have restored circulation, but not full circulation. The arm has thousands of tubal connections beyond our capacity to handle. We can’t match millions of years of evolution. We’re talking about billions of living cells, an extraordinarily complex venous and arterial network, capillary action, of interfacing tendons and bones, of assuring red blood cell manufacture, of natural articulation and sensitivity of arm and hand hairs for kinesthetic sensing, of temperature measuring devices nature prepares for all parts of the body. We would have had to assure the proper functioning of thousands of intricate nerve sensors in the fingertips, of the ability to perspire or to close off pores as internal and external conditions allow. Success would have been partial. Dr. Killian and his staff are extraordinary. They are not supermen.”
Wells pushed aside a thick manual before him. He was nearly exhausted; the mental strain had been far worse on him than the others, and he had found little time for sleep or physical rest in recent days. But it was essential that he get these points down to Steve before the next several days, which would be the most critical hours in his “rebirth.”
“At the same time, when we consider everything we’ve discussed for the past several weeks, Steve, it is vital to remember you are an adult human being with the most extraordinary computer ever known—your brain. You have, also, the values of experience, and logical paths to pursue based on that experience. All these factors, everything we have talked about,” Wells gestured to include the paraphernalia piled about the room, “combine to make possible a living limb created by artificial means.” He pointed to the left arm that had not been there six weeks ago.
“That limb will not do all the things which your own arm could do. It will never be able to match the extraordinary flexibility given you by nature. At the same time, because of our advances in bionics, because of your intelligence and experience, because of adaptability, it provides enormous compensations. In some ways it can be a superior limb. Let’s
try an example.”
He paused long enough to drain cold coffee from a cup before him, then went on. “For example. Let’s say you study a flat, white-paneled sheet with several dark objects placed on that sheet. Let’s look at what nature has enabled you to do, when you decide to do it.”
He looked at Steve, who nodded slowly.
“The light falling on that sheet is absorbed or reflected in the pattern formed by the objects. This reflection is what your optical system detects. Your eye is both a biological sensor and an electrochemical transducer. The system generates a barrage of nerve impulses through the optical network, passing it into a specific area of your brain.”
Steve gestured to interrupt and Wells waited. “How is this message, the nerve impulses, passed on?”
Wells turned to a man at his left, an electronics-systems expert. Steve had come to know Art Fanier well in the past several months. Fanier knew Steve even better. He had created the nerve networks for his bionics limbs. “Art, you want to handle that?”
Fanier spread out his hands, palms up. “We don’t know, Steve. No one really knows. We all know that the system works, but we can’t tell you how.”
“We can follow the process all the way through the system, but its specifics still elude us,” Wells said, and motioned to a technician. “Let me have the optical system chart, Harry. Here, Steve, you can see how the pattern works. When the message arrives at its destination, the brain cells immediately trigger a feedback. New nerve impulses go out, here,” he tapped the chart with a pointer, “and they direct your eye muscles to focus on the pattern of objects placed on the sheet before you.”
“How does the brain trigger the feedback?”
“That’s the part that we don’t know,” Art Fanier broke in. “We’ve measured the electrical output, the pathways followed, the speed of signals. But how all these messages go back and forth is still a mystery.”
“Okay,” Wells said, “we’re at that point where your eye muscles have been told to focus on the objects. We now have a secondary feedback, a constant feedback system that now triggers the computer part of your brain to carry out an immediate search of your memory banks. Do you recognize this pattern you’re studying? Is it familiar to you? If it’s not familiar, can you correlate it with some other experience? Can you determine what it is?
“The feedback that continues throughout all this activity is electrical. You have now determined what you’re seeing. It is not familiar. But there’s enough associative memory here for you to figure out what it is. By now you have studied, researched, computed and decided. What has been an incredible, complicated, coordinated effort is to you but a single instant thought.
“Now,” Wells said, tapping the chart, “it’s time for your brain to shift into another gear. Do you want to pick up one of those objects for closer study? This triggers a vast chain reaction within your brain, which in itself directs a flurry of orders and institutes a vast system of electrical impulses through your nerve system. You commit. You make the decision to pick up one of those interesting objects.”
Steve waited in silence. “This is where we get into the ball game, Steve,” Art Fanier said. “Until this time your own system has done everything. But yours is no longer the same system we all have. You lost that, and we’ve brought it back to you, we hope, in a new way.” Fanier looked troubled. “If things work out, if the theories are true . . .”
“We’ll find out soon enough, Art,” Steve told him. He didn’t like the sudden turn of conversation. He would be activated, which was a hell of a word to use about a human, and yet it was the only word that applied. He’d be activated and they’d find out if theory would work. He turned to Wells who was waiting to continue.
“It’s decision time,” said the doctor. “The brain sends out a new wave of signals. This is the implementation of your decision. The electrical signals flash down a tremendous splay of nerve networks.” The pointer in Wells’s hand moved along the body pathways on the chart. “All this time, of course, you’re burning energy to produce electricity—this is the electrochemical process—and the electricity is causing muscles to react on command. By react, well, perhaps I should use the term, selectively contract. The muscles in your forearm tighten. This in turn stretches and contracts the tendons of your wrist and your fingers. Your fingers send back their own messages—this is the steady feedback operating—relating to sensitivity and the grasping pressure necessary for you to overcome gravity, the mass of the object, by lifting that object.”
The pointer dropped on the table. Wells rubbed his forehead. “As you pick up the object the signals rush back and forth. You bend your arm, twist your wrist, bring the object closer to you, change your optical focus, relate what you see and feel to past memories and new impressions, and all this time you’re storing away data in new memory banks.”
Wells paused again, motioning to an assistant for a fresh pot of coffee. “We can’t duplicate this system. We wouldn’t even try. But what we can do, what we have done, in fact, is to use this science of bionics. We’ve reduced to mathematical symbols the events we just discussed. The engineers converted those symbols into tools and they produced the bionics limbs. But it’s much more than building an arm or a leg that looks like the original. Everyone in this project has worked on the miniaturization level and below. A few years ago all of this would have been impossible. What these people have done under Dr. Killian,” Wells gestured to take in the group in the room, “is to carry out a many-faceted process. It’s a matter of connection, fusing—fusing is the best word I can think of, really—the bionics system with the same elements that existed where your arm was amputated. This is the real key to everything, Steve. When you look at an object, and decide to pick up that object, the signals that leave your brain must transfer to the bionics limb as if it were your own.”
Steve glanced to his left where the bionics limb—the living arm, they called it—was strapped to his side, waiting to be tested. He heard Wells’s voice as if from a distance. “The processes must duplicate what went on before. The operations of your optical system, brain input and output, sensory signals, feedback . . . they must all work as if there had never been any gross alteration to the limb.”
Wells had a new chart brought to the table and started using the pointer again. “Let’s follow this routing, Steve. Your brain sends down its signal in the form of electrical impulses. These travel through the nerve network of your body. While your arm remained a stump . . .” Wells paused, decided against any niceties, and went on, “the signals terminated where the limb was severed. But now the wires in your bionics limb are connected directly—fused, as I said—with those of the stump. They have literally become a single unit. And the elements of the bionics limb have been programmed to respond in direct proportion to the electrical signal that is sent out by your brain. They are also programmed to respond in the same manner as did your entire arm. This is the computer aspect of the bionics system. It’s basically the same system for man or machine.”
“A good analogy, Steve,” Art Fanier said, “would be the power-control system of an aircraft. The brain sends out a signal for a right turn. Your right arm and leg move the proper controls. When you move the controls you send a signal to a system that detects what you want, and moves the controls through hydraulic boost. So long as your hands and feet are on those controls you’re a bionics system, with feedback and the rest of it.” Fanier glanced at Dr. Wells.
“It’s a good comparison,” Wells said. “When you think to pick up an object, what happened before with your original arm is repeated. The electrical impulses generated by your brain command everything. The electrical current—call it voltage or resistance or anything that fits—works the same way. The artificial muscles—Art, let me have that model there, please. The muscles, which in this case are silastic and vitallium pulleys, then contract, twist, and tighten. Everything your own arm did. You can even sense with your fingertips.” Wells tapped the model fingers. �
��Your arm, your new fingers, have vibratory sensors. They detect pressure; they send the pressure signals back to the brain, precisely as before. The feedback system is the same. We can’t quite match the flexibility of wrist and forearm and fingers that nature gave you, but where you lose you also gain.
“Your arm should have—and we’ll find out soon enough now—on the order of ten times the gripping and handling strength you once had. The same applies, of course, for your fingers. Objects you could never dent with your natural fingers before, well, now you should be able to crush them like an eggshell. Your brain, Steve, will carry through every function with which you’re familiar, except pain.”
He paused, an instinctive reflex. How could he forget what Steve had said when he regained consciousness after the long weeks while his new limbs fused to his body? My feet hurt . . .
He looked up to see a bemused smile on Steve’s face. “I had some thoughts about that,” Steve said.
“Some people call it psychological carry-over,” Wells told him. They had discussed it before.
“I know,” Steve said. “It’s a familiar syndrome. Man loses his legs, he still feels pain. His brain is really lying to him. You can also call it psychological compensation. A way for the ego to refuse reality. But that’s not what happened to me, is it?” It was more statement than question.
“No,” Wells said. “We’re in an unknown area here. One can argue the very existence of pain. It doesn’t exist, if you take one particular viewpoint. Pain is simply a survival message, instinctive protection signals transmitted with tremendous energy from the brain.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it, Rudy.”
Their audience remained absolutely silent. To the bionics and cybernetics teams the exchange was critical. Steve Austin at this moment was the only true cybernetics organism living. Cyborg, they called him in the laboratories. And whatever his reaction, it was a measure, successful or otherwise, of their theories and labors. Whatever they heard in this room from this man, whatever he did in the following weeks and months and, they hoped, years, was the beginning of that new science of theirs come to life.
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