by Ivan Bering
She had narrowed her focus to one man: Dr. Joe Wilson, a brilliant scientist, was a critical player at the beginning of the project and then disappeared from the scene. Emma met and talked to Dr. Wilson, years ago at some forgotten conference. This was the man she phoned and used his answering service to leave a desperate appeal for assistance.
Why hadn’t he answered? Why not at least acknowledge her call? Joe was one of the pioneers in the field. An exceptional scientist but a maverick, with a reputation for candid apolitical comments. The Wilson-Armstrong debates became acrimonious, no holds barred yelling matches, both unyielding egos.
Was he out of date? He had been the oldest in the group and left the research program some time ago. Was he current? On the other hand, the gossip in the scientific community was: Dr. Wilson harbored many secrets and declared his willingness to share if it shafted Dr. Max.
A skeptical Emma resisted the idea Dr. Max was culpable. It was unthinkable a scientist of Dr. Armstrong’s caliber would risk his reputation and suppress information of this nature. Although many labeled Max a womanizer, he was one of the top scientists in the world. He would not allow a process to proceed with this type of flaw.
She couldn’t turn to Dr. Max Armstrong because Kate said other developments put Dr. Max temporarily out of the loop. The Wilson option seemed an extreme long shot, and she felt embarrassed to discuss it with Kate. But, if she couldn’t turn to the Nobel Peace Prize winner or his immediate staff, this resulted: an old timer who may or may not have been there when duplicate memory streams appeared.
The Combination Room felt like a sterile operating room with banks of equipment the only company for two desperate women. Their working partnership had begun years before S3 became part of the justice system. As a team, they had tackled and solved many problems; they rarely wasted time with mundane preliminaries. When the duplicate issue erupted, they both understood it would be their most significant challenge, the enigma of the decade.
In the past, when dealing with supervisors, Emma found herself to be a rather diffident participant; this all changed with Dr. Kate where her real intrepid character was allowed to surface and flourish. She understood Emma, trusted her, and recognized her ingenious nature.
“Kate, I now have all the multiple recordings; I think I know what took them so long to get the material to us. I’m afraid I made some enemies at White Rock, and this delay was payback. I’m sorry. I could cry.
Regardless I have been crawling through the details of one case, frame by frame. The problem is the amount time it takes to review and analyze. It’ll take hours to ensure there are no significant differences in the duplicate streams. I’ve almost finished one case and the multiples appear to be duplicates and not a different version of the event, but there are subtle differences which give rise to some doubt. Did I miss something? I’m still not sure. At this rate, it’ll take days to assess all the White Rock records.”
“Well Emma, I have some good news. I reviewed the problem with the head of Information Technology and discovered they have an old program, apparently part of the original memory research project, for analyzing memory streams.
Over the past few years, various summer students had been given the task of upgrading the software; numerous research grants funded the work. Bottom line: in about one hour we’ll receive a technical team from the IT department. These two analysts are familiar with the software and are prepared to view our complete White Rock inventory; and, they believe they can complete a review by the end of the day.
They think it’ll only take about 30 minutes to make some modifications which allow multiple streams to be compared against one standard. So we’ll use the first retrieval and compare all others against it.
Apparently, the differences in colors, shading and so forth will not be a problem for the software. They can isolate which streams are true duplicates and which ones are not. If this works out, we may have all the answers by the end of the day. But I confess, I’m afraid of what we are going to find.”
“This is the best news we’ve had in days. At this point I don’t care what the result is; I just want answers. In my frustration, I began pursuing a different line. Do you remember Dr. Joe Wilson one of the original researchers? Yes? You do? Good. He’s retired and living miles from here, but I found him and left him a long message about our problems.
I thought if anyone knew about these kinds of issues, it had to be Joe. Many felt his contributions were second only to Dr. Max’s, but Joe couldn’t stop criticizing the financial sponsors and irritated the wrong people. I know it’s going back rather far, but I’m told he’s the guy who knows the details. The problem is: he has not responded, but I’m hoping he’ll call us this morning.”
“Sure I know him, and I agree we might have to go that far back to solve this issue. Joe always was a bit of a radical and did manage to get himself forced into an early retirement. But let’s not waste time speculating. While we wait for his call, tell me about the duplicates that you have reviewed.”
“It appears your theory is correct. I’ve examined a dozen duplicate streams. Some contain a crime scene, but there are a variety of events: the birth of a baby, scoring the winning touchdown, a brutal dog attack on a young boy; all are emotional events in someone’s life. The innocent prisoners have about three times the quantity of duplicates. I don’t understand why. But this issue is confusing the scanners and Watchers and pushed us over the 45 minutes for many cases.”
“Emma, my theory is: as a prisoner convicted of a crime you did not commit, your life tends to be very emotional, and this poignant state spawns these duplicates. Possibly, you continue to remember and replay events. Maybe it’s those events which mean the most to you, whether they are failures, or a success, or just a happy afternoon. In any case, these multiples are there and part of our job. I don’t know, maybe the multiplication allows the events to surface faster.
This is just useless speculation, another research paper. Right now we have to figure out how to deal with them. Emma, why don’t you start organizing all the recordings for the IT analysts who will be here shortly? I have to one more loose end to track down. Thanks.”
It was an abrupt ending to the exchange, but Kate was not in the mood for an extended dialogue. Kate had always been an honor student and had a Ph.D. in biochemistry and a medical degree. Prior to joining the Board, she was the lead scientist on numerous research projects at the University Medical Center.
Although intelligent, her success benefited from hours of grinding work, and her last degree, acquired while married, had been particularly difficult. Possibly this accounted for her less than sympathetic demeanor with colleagues or students who she perceived were not committed.
She was now back in regular contact with Stephen but knew any reconnection was out of the question. His marriage appeared stable, and she knew he took his duties too serious to jeopardize his position for an affair. On the few occasions, they had been alone there was some careful reminiscing, but he never made a move to touch her or give any indication that he missed her.
Besides, her daughter, Sonja, depended on her. For the last few years, Sonja maintained a grueling study pattern to produce the necessary grades for admission to medical school. Kate’s support was unlimited, and she did everything possible to assist Sonja with her dream. Then yesterday, after acceptance into medical school along with a prestigious scholarship, Sonja’s first move was to call to her father with the good news. This phone call upset Kate; she couldn’t control her emotions.
Her ex-husband did little to assist Sonja, had not been around to contribute during the tough economic times, and yet Sonja turned to him immediately with the good news. It appeared Kate’s extra efforts and dedication were taken for granted, and father came across as the good guy who provided the positive feedback.
An extraneous sound disrupted Kate’s thoughts. The soft ringing filled the room and Emma answered her cell.
“Hello Dr. Joe. I’m sorry to pu
ll you away from your golf game……………. yes I know you’re not always on the links………..may I put you on the big screen and make this a conference call with Dr. Kate?................... just give me about 30 seconds.” Within a few seconds, the wall screen was filled with Joe’s face and upper body. He looked trim, fit, tanned, and presented a big smile.
“Hi Kate, I won’t waste words. You two are into something, and you’re lucky to have found me. I’ve been on a remote beach with no connections to the rest of the world. It was great. I just got back this morning and reviewed my message service.
And Emma I apologize for the delay; you must have been worried. I think I know what some of the problems are. I’ll provide background which may explain what is going on and why it has been difficult to find out about the early days of the project and the reticence of people. All the research was viewed and, probably still is, as pure academic research emanating from a university campus. In reality, private industry controlled and financed the work.
As the research progressed the potential for truckloads of money became apparent. A pharmaceutical company wanted control of all of the drugs; next, there was hardware, circuit design, and software to be patented and controlled. To be part of the research team, all of us signed secrecy and working agreements with monster financial penalties for those with loose lips. This is still in effect and does cover pensions and any other future cash flow you may have been promised. Control was absolute with Dr. Max editing all research papers or presentations.”
“Joe we wouldn’t think of telling on you, so please open all the doors, and let us know what was going on in those early years.”
“Ladies, I do trust you both. As you know, the first probes were only able to retrieve and play audio pockets from the brain. It was a massive step to get a decent picture to accompany the sound. First, we were only able to retrieve low-grade images; the quality was so poor you couldn’t be sure what was surfacing.
Dr. Max was a fucking bear, and I mean a fucking bear. He would not accept anything but complete success; he was convinced this would work. He literally lived in the lab and personally harassed anyone who wasn’t getting the results he wanted. Naturally, we solved all the issues associated with getting a clear screen image; memory mapping and developing searching strategy became the next hurdles. Did a chronological pattern to a memory schema exist? And where to begin a scan and how to move the probe?
Dr. Max decided to use the Binary Search as the basis for starting each scan, but each individual scanner still decides where to move the probe as he visualizes a schema. Emma, you know even today, it really depends on a good scanner to get a feeling for the pattern, much like geologist has a vision of the underlying folds and layers under the earth’s crust.
Oh sorry, I’m off the central issue and getting carried away. At that time, the probe was controlled and physically moved by hand. And yes, we started to see the same event appear on the screen more than once. After some fierce discussion, the conclusion was the technician was not able to hold or control the probe properly. You know, the technician’s hand only had to slip fractions of a millimeter, and you would be back in the same region, retrieving the same memory stream.”
Both Emma and Kate were quiet, concern growing the longer Joe talked. This was one of the rare times Kate heard Emma swearing, but now she mumbled, quietly and softly, swearing a steady stream.
“Repetition of an event was obviously not acceptable. Max worked with the IT group, working as project leader, writing a significant part of their code. They designed a program which analyzed each scan and compared the results to previous scans. They came up with an algorithm to assess each pixel in a memory stream. The objective was to develop a numerical value for each display. This depended on the detailed analysis of each pixel. To simplify: they added up all the pixel values for a numerical total of the memory pocket or read out. This was called a D Value.
If any scan came up with the same D Value, it was not shown on the screen. That is, it was deemed a duplicate readout due to either to the unsteady hand of the operator or limitations of the probe apparatus. These D values didn’t exactly match. They rarely had exactly the same numeric value. We had an acceptable range, and if they fell within the range, this was deemed satisfactory; they were considered duplicates and filtered out of the feedback.”
“You developed a software filter which blocked all duplicates as you worked your way through a brain scan?’
“Yes Kate, and once we had the filter in place, the results were amazing, and of course, we could complete under the 45-minute limit. And, it’s my understanding numerous versions of this software have been developed; the research funding has allowed summer students to develop and modify more rigorous versions to allow for in-depth analysis of memory streams.”
“Yes, we know about the student software and will be using it today. But, back to the comparisons. You said the comparisons were not necessarily perfect. Can I assume just because two events were within the same D Value range this didn’t automatically prove they were identical?”
“That was my contention, but Dr. Max overrode all the opposition. He said it was good enough. He fell back on FAPP……you know the John Bell abbreviation meaning: for all practical purposes.
Max stated that the differences we were concerned about were not material to the results. The sequence of actions and the players in the events were the same; the different hues, black and white images, the shading, and superimposed images were insignificant. Of course, I pushed too hard and was forced to take an early retirement.”
“Joe to your knowledge did anyone do a manual frame by frame review of all the duplicates to ensure Dr. Max was correct?”
“I’m not sure. Certainly we reviewed a lot but I left before they finished comparisons on many of the streams. Did anyone compare every duplicate scan? I don’t know. Dr. Max assured everyone he had conducted a complete review, and no one was left to challenge him. Besides the results were so fantastic, and as time went by, I think, this was all forgotten; as well, any press releases were controlled by Max.
And remember, at that time it wasn’t to be used to execute people, no one was that prescient. FAPP was not an unreasonable approach.”
Emma was afraid she would become physically ill, and she could see Kate’s face was drained of all color. “Joe, if the duplicate issue was taken care of years ago, why did start showing up the minute we worked on death row convicts?”
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since I listened to your morning message. I called some former colleagues, to understand what’s changed; they are suspicious, which means you better solve it fast because too many people know about White Rock. Anyway, this is what I know.
A few days before you began the Prison Reform project a major revision became operational, modified equipment and software. A new model scanner was used for the first time; here the probe is housed in the helmet device, out of the direct control by the operator. Although the operator still controls the direction of the move, the physical movement is under computer control hence there is no danger of slippage back to a previous location. The prisoner’s head is shaved and the helmet is fitted for best transmission.”
“Doesn’t this improve the process?”
“Yes, it does. But the designers made one assumption. Because no slippage could occur they assumed they would not have to deal with duplicates and didn’t bother trying to include the filtering program into the helmet design, basically the software was discarded.
Now, for the first time it’s obvious the multiple versions are not due to operator error or equipment limits because the probe is not slipping back to a previous location. Multiple copies of memory stream do exist. Now confirmed. No doubts. Listen I’m sorry.
This is as far as I go and will not be available to testify or whatever else may be required; the financial penalties are too severe. I’ve been through enough with Dr. Max and his crew. No more phone calls, the rest is up to you. Kate, yo
u have a helluva problem on your hands; I don’t have any suggestions but do recommend you keep Dr. Max out of this as long as you can. I just don’t trust him to come up with a solution which doesn’t first serve his reputation.”
They continued with some minor chatter, which was a little ridiculous given what they had just heard, then all signed off. Two apprehensive women filled their coffee cups and started pacing the room, neither speaking, the only sound the scuffling of their footwear. They walked around the entire large sterile room. Up and down the room, round the tables and chairs, a short pause to look out a window and then back to the rambling. Emma started.
“Kate, I think I can solve the problem of the duplicates appearing during the scanning. I need some time to test my solution with our current equipment and a little help from IT.
The more critical question is: what is in those multiple memory streams? Are they true duplicates? Can you work with IT team and get that question answered today? Did Dr. Max review ever incident of the duplicates they encountered? Did he go beyond FAPP? Joe certainly is doubtful.”
Kate was shaken by the aggressive nature of Emma’s outburst. “Yes, I am prepared to work with IT, for as long it takes. And we will have answers by the end of the day, but tell me how are you going to keep the new scanner from delivering the duplicates?”
When Emma told her, Kate laughed for the first time in a couple of days. “Sure it might work. No, I’ll go further. It will work. It normally is the most obvious solution which is the answer.
And Emma, for a change of pace. I have one for you. Are you ready for this?
Charlie Taylor is on the list to be the one and only Watcher for one of the convicts, the last one in the queue on death row at Fort Green. What do you think about this appointment? To me, it’s almost as mysterious as the Chief Duncan promoting him to head up Homicide.”
