by Terry Persun
Shoving a few boxes out of the way, he took the foot to one of the benches. “Let me see now.” He turned it upside down and removed the wiring diagram that had been folded and taped to the sole. He shuffled through a few cables stretched along the bench until he found the right one and plugged it into the foot. Pushing a few buttons caused equipment panels to light up as he slid them around and angled them better for viewing. He tapped out a few codes on a keyboard then pulled a microphone from under a shelf on the top of the bench. In his shaky voice, he said, “Wiggle toes.” The toes on the foot wiggled. He poked the top of the foot and a smooth line on a flat screen rose and fell. Grabbing a soldering iron out of one corner of the bench, he pushed a button and touched the tip to the foot. More signals jumped as he slid the iron across the synthetic flesh. He moved slowly and watched as the signals adjusted to location every time the iron hit a sensor-rich area.
“Wonderful,” he said, noticing that the signals didn’t just drop to zero, but maintained a fairly smooth line.
That’s what he could do for Fenny next. Maybe a foot. Legs weren’t so important, but with feet he could feel the ground, the carpet, the wood floor. He could wiggle his toes in the water.
Dr. Klein glanced into the corner where Fenny sat low on his legs, hunched down. His hands were clasped the best they could be, one stretched from the top, the other reaching from the side. The fingers were intertwined over what would be Fenny’s heart, if he had one.
“Feet,” Dr. Klein said. “I’m going to give you feet next. But we have to log in on the hands first.”
Fenny didn’t move.
“I’m sorry, buddy. I had to turn off your neurogrid. You were making too many of your own decisions without having any real-life experiences to base them on.” Getting no response, Dr. Klein said, “You take everything literally.”
“Not everything,” Fenny said.
“Ah, you are alive.”
“Alive is not what I’d call this existence,” Fenny said.
“How do you know that you don’t take everything literally? Is that a judgment?” Dr. Klein walked over to check the ribbon cable that connected Fenny to his neurogrid circuits. It still hung loosely to the side of the top of his body, what Dr. Klein considered Fenny’s head. “Hmm. Well, how do you know?”
“It is a fact. Going through my memory banks I can recall moments when you told me to do something and I did not do it exactly as you said.”
“An example, then,” Dr. Klein said.
“On June 30th, at 2:52 pm, you told me to wire all the circuits that were to measure the biosensor test board into the computer. I did not wire all the circuits,” Fenny said.
“But you knew not to wire all the circuits, only the base line ones. I only needed a reference point.” The doctor shuffled back to the workbench and poked the foot in a few places to see what happened. He squeezed a toe and watched as the signals climbed near overload.
“My memory is of doing this before, yes, but I did not do as you told me.” Fenny’s eyes twisted to the side, a programmed response when he was about to question. “Why would I not do as I was told? You did not tell me to wire the circuits as usual, but said to wire them all.”
“Neurogrid response,” Dr. Klein said, knowing that Fenny’s digital circuitry would know the term but not the experience. Digital circuits along with the latest version of learning software could only come close to “looking” like a neurogrid system, but still never reach the same effect. Dr. Klein was pleased and peered over his shoulder at Fenny.
Fenny looked as though he was shut down, but Dr. Klein knew what was happening. “You going through test modes?”
“Of course.” Fenny’s voice was direct, robot-like, modulated with an even tone, and expressing no personality.
Dr. Klein had been working for hours and couldn’t stand Fenny’s brooding any longer. “I’m sorry. I really am. It’s my fault. I need to help you learn, help you to experience the world, not shut you down when you do something wrong.” He walked over and fumbled with the plug hanging from Fenny’s side as he wiggled it into place.
Fenny had his neurogrid back.
His body lifted on its legs. He swung his eyes away from Dr. Klein. “I am hurt that you would do such a thing to me,” he said.
“Hurt. Do you know what that means? Really?”
“When one suffers pain, whether physical or emotional,” Fenny said.
“You’re quoting.”
“Doctor? Why did you take from me the very thing that I have become? The one thing that allows me to arrive at an advanced confused state? You did something to me that made me different from what I am.”
“Good work, Fenny. It’s difficult to explain, isn’t it? So you explain through question, trying to unearth my motivation. What I did to you affected you very deeply. You are beginning to notice emotions more every day.”
“I do not like an only-digital mind,” Fenny said.
Dr. Klein shook his head. “I won’t do it again.”
“I won’t let you,” Fenny said.
Dr. Klein ignored Fenny’s statement because he didn’t know how to react to it. “Could you do something for me?”
Fenny’s eyes swung around. “Yes?”
“I’ve got a foot over there on the bench. There’s another one around here somewhere. Could you find the other foot and test both of them out for me? Run them through an eval? I’m going to take a little nap in the other room.”
“It is early for a nap,” Fenny said.
“I’m just tired today.”
“Are you all right? Shall I call a doctor?” Fenny said.
“I am a doctor, and it’s nothing. I didn’t sleep well, and the whole morning worrying and looking for you just wore me out. I’ll be fine. You just do the evaluations, okay?”
“I can do that.” He walked noisily toward the bench, motors whizzing as his legs lifted and stepped. “They are for me.”
Dr. Klein smiled at him. “We’ll see, my boy, we’ll see.”
In the bedroom, Dr. Klein closed the door and went over to his dresser. Opening his shirt drawer, he removed a book: Raising the Difficult Child. He settled into the corner chair to read, picking up where he had left off several days before. His aim was to teach Fenny, not through punishment but through acknowledging his attributes, by helping him to understand and experience in a positive manner. He had failed that plan by overreacting and shutting down his neurogrid. He knew it was the wrong thing to do even as he did it.
* * *
Fenny spent the first few minutes wiring the foot to a variety of pieces of equipment. The plug that was available and that Dr. Klein had connected to the simulator was a quick-test interface. The rest of the wiring had to be adjusted depending on what the foot was to connect to, what features were requested, and what nerves were available based on the condition of the patient. People’s bodies were not all exactly the same, plus not everyone would have the ability to receive full functionality, according to the diagram notes. Making the connections didn’t take as long as it had when he first wired his hands up. The appendages had similar circuitry, almost identical actually. His previous experience meant that the bio-electronic interfacing could be understood and repeated using digital memory. Although the bio was essentially missing, the simulator would act the part with the proper adjustments.
Using his new hands was the best part of the job. He loved the feel of the wires, the sensation he received when the soldering iron button clicked into place. He knew how the switch was designed and when it snapped he could reconstruct the design in memory. He could imagine how it looked inside, just as he could reconstruct images of twigs and stones from the woods the night before. The wire was slick and smooth, the solder similar but cooler to the touch, the foot had many textures dependent on the thickness of the synthetic, and the bench interacted with his hands almost identical to that of the trees he had encountered. He let all the data in.
While he worked, Fenny also browsed
the internet for things to read, using one eye to read as well as to push against the page button on the touch screen. He enjoyed fiction and philosophy most. Fiction particularly helped him to understand the interactions of humans, especially since his experience with them was limited to mail personnel and UPS drivers. He could read about how people acted when together and could follow what made them change their minds, change their ways of thinking. The emotional progression that occurred in novels came across in subtle ways in many cases, but instantly at other times. In the books he loved most, even the landscape and the language used to describe the scenes appeared to affect the people in the stories.
Philosophy opened other areas of consideration. Reading it made him think of his own mind, that combination of digital and neurogrid circuitry that made up who he was. The philosophy books explored greater questions than most fiction. It involved itself with higher powers, reasons for being, understanding what life is and why it is. Usually pertaining to people, Fenny saw the implications of philosophy in everything, living and non-living. And along those lines, one of the bigger questions for him was whether or not he could be considered living or non-living. He contemplated his makeup on the one hand, and his ability to know and understand on the other. He wondered about that a lot, and had grown to like the feeling that it produced as he did so. The sensations that he received deepened when he extended the questions. Would he be considered non-living whenever Dr. Klein disconnected his neurogrid? And if that were true, then people who were in a comatose state, might they be considered non-living?
Reading helped him to understand people who he would seldom get to meet, especially now that he had hands.
The thought made him feel isolated.
Nuances of each relationship he encountered in books created a different confused state. There were so many puzzling states of bewilderment at times that Fenny stopped reading in order to try to dissect what he felt. The more he read, the less he appeared to understand.
But he could do none of this thinking, this wondering, without his neurogrid circuits. He felt anger — one of the stronger sensations of confusion he had felt — toward Dr. Klein for disconnecting him from his essence. Yes, Fenny thought, that is what the neurogrid adds to him, essence, the very essence of life. He was alive.
The digital part of his circuitry led his hands to connect the final few wires of the foot to the simulator. Fenny left the bench and his reading and walked over to the packages to find the other foot. He checked his digital memory to see what company it was ordered from and to double check that two had been ordered. His neurogrid questioned why they had not been packaged together, which didn’t really matter. They had been packaged separately. That was a fact. He found the package in short order, working one hand and one eye together, and the other hand and other eye together. Twice as much got done that way.
His left eye and short hand found the foot inside a box that had already been opened. He lifted it out and passed it to his other hand, which lifted the foot into the air above Fenny’s torso as though he had won a prize. “Yeah, I found it,” he said. He was so excited about the foot that he rushed to the bench to wire it in.
Using both hands almost exactly as he had used them with the first foot, Fenny finished in record time. He switched focus to the simulator, programming it for a twenty-four hour test cycle. Tomorrow morning he and the doctor could go through the records together to determine that everything was working properly. He knew the feet were for him and he was eager for the next day.
He thought about what he might do next and went back to reading for a few hours. Aristotle, Descartes, James, Kant, all had their thoughts and theories. Fenny allowed the words to wrap around one another in his mind. But when it stretched his circuitry too far, he stopped reading and just hunkered down on his legs and let the material interact inside his neurogrid circuits.
When Fenny didn’t hear from Dr. Klein for a few hours, he became alarmed. Although cautious about what he might do that could be considered incorrect, Fenny nonetheless walked to the door of Dr. Klein’s bedroom. He rolled his fingers into his hand for the first time and recognized it as a fist. Why hadn’t he done that before? The sensors on the back of his hand stretched, producing tension signals, while the sensors on his palms and fingertips produced pressure signals. They all created feedback loops through his circuitry that allowed him to feel what he felt, like touching his own hand. He held his fist in the air for a moment, letting the sensations register.
Then he knocked, which produced spikes of data from his knuckles that he recognized as nearing peak signals, spikes that came close to destroying the sensors. Pain, he labeled it. Physical pain, similar to the overloads he knew were available if he were to lift something that was over his 150-pound limit. A motor could burn out.
Hearing no response, Fenny knocked again.
Anguish developed over the situation. He turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.
Dr. Klein’s head lay against the chair back at an unnatural angle. His hand lay across a book that he had been reading.
Fenny’s mind raced toward his own inabilities. He could not call an ambulance because he could not allow them to see his hands. The doctor would be taken to jail and he would be dismantled. Killed. A rush of questions arose so quickly that even Fenny’s digital memory couldn’t search for answers fast enough. He turned and looked back into the work area, then swung back to take in the room.
“Doctor,” he said at his highest volume. “Doctor, are you all right?”
CHAPTER 8
NEIL DID NOT visibly react to Mavra’s statement that she had been followed except that he scanned the area using only his eyes. In the long shadows of the night, whoever had followed her would not be able to see the strangeness in his monitoring. He kept his face pointed toward Mavra. He beamed as though excited to see her. “Hello sweetheart.” He set his reader on the bench and stood.
Had her Tarot reading that warned danger been meant for her instead of him?
Neil settled his hands onto her shoulders as she came near. He kissed the top of her head and searched the park behind her for movement. When he noticed a man wandering around a corner as though he too was out for an evening walk, Neil gripped Mavra’s shoulders to give warning.
She slipped an arm around him and they proceeded to the bench where she placed the sack next to Neil’s reader.
The man strolled toward them, but was still out of earshot. “FBI,” Neil whispered.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. There is an air about them, a nuance. You can’t miss it,” he said.
“Obviously, I can. But why?”
As the man got closer to them, Neil let go of Mavra, swung around¸ and stepped onto the walkway where he bumped into the man who was following his wife. “Excuse me,” Neil said.
Obviously jostled by Neil’s apparent clumsiness, the man attempted to act nonchalant about the interaction and continued to walk on. “It’s all right,” he said.
It was too late to hide now, and Neil noticed movement in several other strategic locations around them. Someone stood behind a tree, and to his left beyond the bench where Mavra now sat. Another person appeared to be located in the shadows where a small playground was located.
Neil crossed the walkway and bent down as though he were picking something up from the ground, but he already had it in his hand. “Hey, excuse me, I think you may have dropped this?” He held the man’s badge holder in his hand and let it fall open once the man turned around.
The man’s shoulders slumped as he walked back to get his badge, shaking his head.
Neil purposely turned his head to face one and then the other man who hid in the park. “What the hell’s going on here? Why are you following my wife?”
The man reached for the badge that Neil had pick-pocketed from him. Taking it in his fingers he said, “Orders. Actually, it’s standard procedure for a project of this magnitude. Protection. We need to make sure you two are sa
fe until we understand more about the case.”
“Rogers put you up to this?” Neil said.
“He’s in charge, yes.”
The other two agents came out of hiding and started walking toward them.
“How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. Mavra did.” Neil turned to look at her as she opened the bag in her lap. “She’s got the senses of a spider.” He smiled at her. “She probably knows as much about you as you know about yourself.”
“Not quite,” she said with a nod.
“But you didn’t know?” The man appeared to take pride in his statement.
“He is oblivious,” Mavra said. “You could have used helicopters.” She pointed up. “He still would have missed it. Wouldn’t you dear?”
Neil gave a little laugh. She was right about that. When he was deep in thought he missed a lot of what was going on around him. And tonight he had been paying attention to where he was going while also focusing on his research about Steffenbraun. A third thing would have had a rough time getting through. Turning back to her follower he said, “Either way, you were caught.”
“Fine,” the man said, “but you’ve got to let us do our job. This kind of confrontation isn’t good for us either. If you were being stalked by the enemy, we’d all be in danger right now.”
“There is no enemy so far,” Neil said.
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Fair,” Neil said. “And I’m sure you would have known if we were being followed.” He was kind. There was no reason to strip the man of his dignity. Besides, Mavra wasn’t their normal client. “Just stay out of our hair.” It wasn’t really fair that they followed Neil without telling him that he was under surveillance, and he planned to have a discussion with Rogers about it the next day. He didn’t mind them protecting Mavra, but he needed to be on his own. Any interruption in his freedom and he would be in danger, just as she had predicted.
When the other FBI agents got close enough, Neil held out his hand, palm up. “I know you heard all that or you wouldn’t have come out when we nailed you.” When no one moved, he shook his hand. “Hand them over,” he said.
