by Paul Anlee
Darak smiled kindly. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t need to sleep…much.” Stralasi heard the slight hesitation before he added the last word. “Anyway, I have some work to do back at the Garden asteroid, or rather, some work to assign. Why don’t you rest and I’ll be back when you wake up.”
Stralasi couldn’t resist the wave of sleepiness that came over him. He fell back on the bed and was unconscious in seconds. Darak watched him for a minute and then disappeared with a small popping sound, leaving the exhausted Brother to his dreams.
36
Darian Leigh woke to deep, silence, darkness, and pain. He dampened the agony coming from his left shoulder. Well, at least I’m alive…I think.
Everything felt strange, hollow. Oh! My brain must be unconscious. His entire cognitive experience was running solely on his silicene semiconductor lattice. That’s never happened before.
His body felt oddly distant. He sensed that he was lying down. His touch, kinesthetic, and pain receptors were all reporting normally. Soft sounds impinged on his auditory channels: regular beeping of a heart and respiration monitors, hushed talking off to his right. He felt the weight of a warm blanket pressing firmly and evenly across his body.
It sounds like a surgical recovery room. His biological brain was still groggy from the general anesthetic. Odd—my lattice is active, but out of sync with the rest of the brain.
The pain was gone. In fact, he felt nothing at all, but he knew it would come rushing back the instant he unblocked the sensory channel. For the moment, his experience seemed to be free of the normal neurohormonal wash of emotions. He replayed his memories of what happened in the hall. When he saw his assassin’s trigger finger tighten, he slowed the images so he could track the bullet’s trajectory.
Ah, yes. He had let himself be distracted by the seething hatred and insane accusations of his assailant, and moved too late. Greg’s heroic tackle had shifted the gunman's aim a hair to the left. Darian had failed to evade the bullet entirely but, luckily, it only smashed his collarbone instead of piercing his heart.
He analyzed his lattice-based response to the physical trauma, and identified several significant weaknesses. The dendies only extended a little way into the autonomic and limbic nervous systems. The lattice had a still smaller overlap with the RAS, the Reticular Activating System that normally connected the conscious brain to its body. It was enough to suppress pain and to keep him from moving around when he was watching inSense.
Interesting. I’ll have to look into the pros and cons of extending the dendy lattice’s reach into older, deeper parts of the brain. Having direct access to physiological functions like respiration and heart-rate as well as a range of hormones could be useful. More relevant to his current predicament, he would have control over the brain-body connection and consciousness.
What if my biological brain doesn’t wake up? Could I dispense with my brain altogether and operate solely on my semiconductor lattice? He contemplated the idea. No. I’m not quite ready for life in this stark, strictly logical, state of consciousness. I need a way to realistically simulate emotional responses before I try that.
He wondered how his lattice had become operational in his present state. Normally, when his brain felt the need to sleep, it detached consciousness from sensorimotor functioning, and his lattice became dormant as well.
He tried to feel the active pathways, without success. Either some residual activity of the RAS had managed to fool the lattice into perceiving his status as alert, or the dendies had become active all on their own. He would have to run a proper scan once the hospital released him.
No idea how long it will be before the rest of me wakes up. I might as well take advantage of the downtime. He turned his attention to designing new viral vectors for broader dendy control of brain functions.
Half an hour later, the unaccustomed sense of confusion returned. His brain was stirring slowly awake, its biological consciousness battling for dominance with the dendy lattice. While one part of him was happily engaged in design work, the other part was groggily trying to figure out what happened and where he was.
Memories of DNA and RNA and protein models clashed with the renewed perception of pain and sound. His lattice-based self quickly stored away his work in progress, leaving the confused biological part of him to puzzle out his whereabouts and what had happened.
The young professor struggled to bring his dazed brain up to speed by rapidly forming new biological memories, but the neurons refused to cooperate. His synapses were flooded with residual anesthetic and not responding correctly to nudges from the dendy lattice. He hadn’t felt this weird since he was twelve. It was like pulling a heavy tractor with a Ferrari using a rubber tow rope. Part of him would race ahead while the other part tried to catch up.
His sluggish biological brain was having a lot of trouble accepting impulses from the lattice, including signals to disengage for a while. He tried to synchronize semiconductor and neural thinking for a few more seconds and then gave up. Reluctantly, he put his dendy consciousness into “hibernation” mode to await reactivation once his biological brain got control of itself, and he drifted back into the haze.
* * *
“Mr. Leigh? Darian? Are you back with us yet?” The nurse leaned forward, presenting her face for him to focus on.
He groaned, responding more to the pain near his left shoulder than to her calls. A vague memory flitted through his awareness; he'd been spun around by the impact of the bullet as it passed through him, shattering his collar bone. He recalled losing consciousness, the result of his biological brain and semiconductor lattice becoming simultaneously overwhelmed by the shock.
Still unable to muster his senses to respond to the nurse, Darian woke his lattice, allowing its memories to flow over his neurons, this time gently re-exerting control over his physiology.
He was surprised to discover that the lattice had already been working in the background. He was not at all surprised, however, by the direction his newest research had taken while he'd been unconscious. He rallied the lattice to his aid in reducing the pain, or rather his perception of it, to a more tolerable level.
“I’m awake,” replied Darian, “Groggy. How bad is the damage?”
“I’ll have to let the doctor tell you about that,” the nurse answered as she slipped a stethoscope under the pressure cuff on his right arm. She listened attentively for a few seconds. “Your pulse is sounding better; I think we can move you out of here and into your own room. I’ll get an orderly to come help move you.” She went across the hall to the nearby nursing station, made a brief call, and poked her head back in the doorway to deliver the news. “Someone will be here in a few minutes, and then we’ll get you more comfortable.”
Thirty minutes later, a voice woke him up. “Mr. Leigh?” Darian tried to nod and sit up but the spiking pain in his clavicle made him wince. “Yeah,” he grunted.
The orderly apologized for the delay in getting down to recovery. “No worries,” Darian slurred.
A junior nurse disconnected him from the recovery room monitoring equipment and prepped the bed for moving. The orderly keyed the new room number into the clip pad, dropped it back in the holder at the foot of the bed, and started walking. The bed followed him on its own power.
“We’re heading up to the sixth floor in the new Pacifica complex,” the orderly said, looking back over his shoulder. “You’ll like it up there.” As they left the OR recovery area, two uniformed policemen silently stepped into place behind them, one on either side of the mobile bed.
The orderly looked back at Darian who raised his eyebrows in silent question. “I guess they figure you still need protecting,” the man replied. Darian grunted.
His posse inspected the room and, finding it clear, stepped aside as his bed docked. The floor nurse arrived and reconnected the vitals monitor. Moments later, he was alone with the quiet hums, drips, and clicks of his room. Exhausted, Darian relaxed the
lattice’s grip on his brain and he let himself ease back into a welcome sleep.
* * *
“Hello. Mr. Leigh? I’m Madison,” came a voice through the fog. “Do you need to use the washroom?” Now that his attention was drawn to his bladder, Darian realized he did need to go. He nodded—more carefully, this time—and tried to sit up so he could swing his feet to the floor. The room whirled, and he dropped his head back to the pillow. This is starting to get annoying–he thought. I’ll really have to look into going fully semiconductor.
“I’ll bring you a bottle,” the voice suggested. He felt a consoling hand pat his forearm. The nurse went into the adjoining washroom and returned with a blue plastic bottle, which she handed to Darian. He looked at it skeptically before pulling it under the covers and positioning himself as best he could. He tried to imagine the nurse wasn’t watching over him so intently, and was soon rewarded with a warm trickle.
Three seconds later, the warm trickle was running down his buttocks and onto the sheet. He tried to re-position the bottle but his body was not responding well, and the trickle continued wherever gravity and his bad aim directed it. He gave up, realizing they were going to have to change the sheets anyway.
He laughed drunkenly at the ridiculousness of his situation—courtesy of the aftereffects of the anesthetics. He was used to being in full control of his body, thoughts, and emotions at all times. All it had taken was one little bullet for him to see how illusory that control had been.
“How are we doing?” the nurse asked.
“Not very well, I’m afraid” he replied, thickly. “I think I’m going to need some fresh sheets.”
The nurse looked only a little exasperated as she took the bottle from him. “Well, that happens,” she said curtly. She ducked out and came back within seconds with fresh linen and some help. Working as a well-coordinated team, the two nurses outfitted him with clean, dry sheets and a new gown. The process wore him out, and he found himself dozing again. Unconsciousness brought relief. Though he managed to keep most of the pain at bay, he still felt an unaccustomed heaviness in his head, and slept.
* * *
“Well, that was a close call, wasn’t it?”
Darian pried his eyes open and looked to see who was disturbing his rest this time.
A middle-aged woman with short, disheveled hair regarded him clinically from beside the bed. A short white lab coat covered her standard hospital-issued green scrubs. “I’m Dr. Stephenson,” she said. “I’m the one who rebuilt your collar bone.” She held out her hand, and Darian shook it weakly.
“Thank you.”
“Luckily, the bullet missed your aorta or you wouldn’t even have made it to the hospital.”
“Luckily,” Darian replied. “If I hadn’t been so distracted by his crazy rant, I might have avoided the shot completely. It put my timing off.”
She regarded him skeptically. “Well done, I guess,” she said. “Let’s have a listen.” She put the cold stethoscope to his chest without bothering to warm it. “Slow breath in. Now, let it out. Good. Again.”
She pulled the stethoscope away, compared the monitor readouts with earlier log entries, and keyed an entry into the clip-pad. “Everything looks good. Well, as good as possible for a man who barely avoided death today. I have to say, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of someone getting shot at a philosophy lecture. You must have said something that really ticked the guy off.”
“It was more of a popular science lecture. And certain types of people are easily upset, I guess,” he answered.
“My apologies. I’d heard it was at a Philosophers Café, and I just assumed.” She spun on one heel and left the room. Darian lay back on his pillow, letting sleep wash over him. The door to his room opened again. Two heads peered around the door. It was Kathy and Greg.
Kathy set a cheery bouquet with a “Get Well Soon” balloon on the nightstand and took Darian’s hand in hers. “Thank God, you’re alright.”
“I don’t think God had anything to do with it,” Darian replied. He looked over at Greg. “Thank you, both of you, for stopping that whack job from getting off another shot. That was either very brave or very foolish, I’m not sure which. But thanks, anyway.”
Greg smiled shyly. “Foolish, I think. The guy didn’t see me at all, even though he was right in front of me. It was a pretty easy tackle. I didn’t even think about it.”
“Well, I wish you would’ve tackled him about two hundred milliseconds later,” said Darian. “I would have been out of the way of the bullet. Your tackle jarred the pistol to his left. The bullet shattered my clavicle.”
Greg scoffed, incredulously. “You mean, instead of going through your heart?” he said. “That’s the thanks I get?”
“No, you’re right,” answered Darian. “I’m sorry. I’m not quite myself yet. The anesthetic is playing havoc with my brain and my lattice can’t seem to get properly synchronized.”
Kathy let go of Darian’s hand. She moved to Greg’s side and took his arm protectively. “You should be grateful. He risked his life for you. We both did.”
“I know,” Darian acknowledged. “Listen, I’m really thankful for what you did. It was courageous, and you probably saved my life. If he’d gotten off a second shot, I might not have been so fortunate. Thanks.”
He looked at Kathy and smiled contritely, “Thanks for launching yourself onto the tackle, too." His eyes moved to where her hand clutched Greg’s bicep. "So are you two together now? Is this something I need to consider when scheduling work?”
“We are,” Kathy said defiantly.
Greg looked surprised and embarrassed but proud, nonetheless. He pulled her closer and put his hand over hers. “We are,” he said. “But it won’t affect our work,” he added hastily. “Our lattices are growing well. There are no signs of complications, and we’ve both noticed slight improvements in our performance this past week.”
Kathy grinned and looked at the floor. Greg blushed. “At work, I mean. Geez, at work! We’ve been finding it a little easier to understand everything. Reading research articles is a snap. I follow the math better now, and Kathy’s engineering work has been progressing well. In fact, she’s almost finished the RAF generator.”
Darian eased himself upright, more interested. “That’s good to hear,” he said. “I don’t know how long they’ll keep me in here. Probably a few days, I imagine.”
“Is that all?” asked Kathy.
“Yeah, their part is done; the recovery work is up to me. My left collarbone was completely smashed in the middle section but they implanted a 3D-printed scaffolding for a new one. It hurts like hell, but it’s probably in better shape than it feels. It’ll take months to fully repopulate with my own bone cells, but these newer scaffolds have quite a lot of strength on their own. If I promise to be good, I’m sure they’ll let me out before next weekend, especially if I promise not to give any more public lectures.”
Greg and Kathy grinned. “It will be great to have you back,” she said. “We’ve missed you.”
“Listen,” said Darian. “They have full internet access here. I’ll set up a discussion interface on my live feed page and email you guys the access code. We can keep in touch during the week, in case you have any questions. And maybe we can do a test run as soon as I’m out of here.”
Greg and Kathy nodded and answered at the same time, “Okay.”
“Anyway,” Darian continued, “with no teaching or committee meetings for a while, I might actually get a chance to push the theory a bit further. Maybe even come up with some new ideas for experimental validation.”
Darian looked behind the two of them at the door to his room. “Where’s Larry? Didn’t he come to the hospital with you?”
“I don’t know. Everything happened so fast after you were shot,” answered Greg. “It was pretty chaotic there for a few minutes. I didn’t really see him.”
Darian remembered spotting Larry sitting sev
eral rows above the other two. “Is something going on?” he asked. “Does this have anything to do with the two of you having a relationship?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Kathy. “We had a fight over the dendy virus capsule. Greg and I took it; Larry refused. He kinda freaked out a little. We thought it was just a hissy fit, and that it would all blow over by the next day or two. We’d had a few drinks, loose tongues, said some stuff, you know. He was really upset. He said we were crazy, the risks were too high, that he wasn’t having any of it, and stuff like that. He made quite a scene. But leading-edge science is never without its risks.” She looked pointedly at Greg, “And its risk takers, right? Besides, we were pretty sure you wouldn’t give us anything you thought was dangerous.”
“Well, thank you for the vote of confidence. I’m sorry; I didn’t think Larry would object so vehemently to the enhanced-IQ lattice. There are obviously some things I don’t know about him yet.”
“I’ve known him a long time,” said Greg, “and even I didn’t see that coming. For some reason, he suddenly got all cautious with us, like, scared or something. I think he might have some religious-type objections.”
“Religious objections?”
“Well, he doesn’t talk about it much, but Larry was raised Orthodox when he lived in Russia. We’ve had a few deep conversations over the occasional too-many beers. I think he could be a closet believer.”
“Really?” Darian and Kathy both asked at the same time.
Greg smiled, “Well, it is possible that even an astrophysicist could hold a belief in a creator deity. After all, we haven’t proved your hypothesis to be correct yet, you know.”
Darian sighed, suddenly exhausted again. “That’s true,” he said. “But there are many reasons why the idea of an original creator is highly unlikely.”
“Oh, I agree,” said Greg. “And I still think it’ll all blow over, especially after the shooting. I’ll talk to Larry. I’m sure I can convince him it’s safe to take the capsule now that he can see for himself it’s not causing us any problems and it’s already helped us become smart enough to understand most of what you’re trying to teach us. I’m sure he’ll come around.”
