Revision 7: DNA

by Terry Persun

  Mavra ate a candy bar while they drove on for another fifteen minutes. The side road brought them to a Y where Jesus stopped the car. “Get out.”

  This time Gatsby grabbed Mavra’s arm, his grip much tighter than Leonardo’s had been. He hauled her out faster than was necessary also. Some of the packets of food fell on the ground as she stumbled over the running board. She went to pick them up, but Gatsby still held onto her.

  He turned his head her way and said, “Don’t even try to run off.” He let go of her so that she could collect her food from the ground.

  “I didn’t before,” she reminded him as she scooped things up. “There’s nowhere to go anyway.”

  “Smart human,” he said.

  “Mavra,” she said. “If you’re going to hold me hostage, you might as well call me by my name.”

  Gatsby stepped past her and grabbed his gun from the floor of the SUV. “Get the dark energy balancer,” he said to Leonardo.

  “I’ll take that,” Jesus said, removing it from Leonardo’s grip and looking around as though thinking or making up his mind about something.

  “I like the sound of your name,” Leonardo said to Mavra while they waited for Jesus’s next orders.

  “All names sound stupid,” Gatsby said.

  “Our names don’t,” Leonardo said. “They fit us.”

  “You are no Leonardo,” Gatsby said, mocking his associate.

  “Knock it off,” Jesus held the device under one arm and stood at the front of the SUV. He looked at Gatsby and pointed along the right path of the Y. “You’re going to drive down this road for another five miles, then pull over. I want you to run back this way at least two miles on the road surface, and don’t get seen by anyone. Should be easy at this time of night. At that point, take off through the woods and meet us at…”

  “I know where you’re going,” Gatsby said.

  “We’ll see you in a little while then,” Jesus said.

  Gatsby got into the car and drove off.

  Jesus told Leonardo to pick Mavra up. “You’re going to carry her through the woods. Even if they’re lucky and find both sets of tracks, they won’t know which set to follow.”

  Mavra realized that he didn’t have to explain himself. He wanted to be acknowledged. He needed to hear it for some reason and she couldn’t decide if it was a habit he’d gotten into or a psychological need from being ignored at some point in his life, however long that life had been.

  Her thoughts were broken when Leonardo lifted her from the ground. His mechanical arms were not hard like his body. They were soft, like real arms, but stronger, like mechanical arms.

  “This way,” Jesus said leading Leonardo down the left side of the Y.

  Mavra hardly bounced in Leonardo’s arms as he ran behind Jesus. He must have compensated for the load. They also ran faster than she would have expected. Running must have been something they had gotten used to. She tried to think as they ran, but it wasn’t long before Jesus led them off the road and into the woods. Rather than thinking she focused on where they were going. If she were to escape, she’d want to know how to get out of the woods. She also tucked in as close to Leonardo as possible to avoid getting hit by bushes or branches.

  The awkwardness of the run increased as Leonardo sidestepped trees and jumped over roots. He stumbled once in a while when the footing became unstable. At one point, he almost dropped her, but his hands gripped quickly and solidly and he held tight. She knew she’d have a bruise from that one though.

  Even though the woods were dark, the robots appeared to be able to find their way quickly, and in a short while the woods opened to a very small clearing and a hand-built cabin, equally small.

  Leonardo set her down.

  The cabin looked old and run down. She saw no road leading to it. It was a hunting cabin where the hunters had to hike in from the road. That would stop some of the overweight FBI she had been introduced to from getting there very quickly. But she doubted that it would stop Neil.

  CHAPTER 17

  FENNY DID NOT SHOW his excitement over Dr. Klein’s announcement. He had never heard of the existence of a DNA-enhanced electronics component. He couldn’t imagine what that might be, how it might work. DNA was an enzyme, not a living cell. It held a code for human traits; that was all. But if those codes were similar to his digital brain, could they also provide information of a different kind, to his neurogrid? He stared at Dr. Klein, who sat resting in his chair with his eyes closed and his breathing deep and even. The doctor slept more often lately, and Fenny worried for his health at first, until he read that it was normal for humans to take naps as they got older.

  While Dr. Klein slept, it provided Fenny the opportunity to explore using his hands, but when he became tired of that, expressed in his circuitry as the repeated testing of similar items, Fenny looked for other experiences. The most available new experience in the lab at the time was the feet Dr. Klein left sitting on the bench.

  Running through the digital memory of how Dr. Klein had him connect the hands, Fenny realized that the feet couldn’t be much different, and he got to work right away, figuring that he only had an hour or two before the doctor woke up again.

  Fenny collected all the tools he would need and placed them strategically along the workbench. Connecting his feet would be somewhat easier because he could use both of his hands. And it would be fun, he thought, to experience the feel of each foot as he wired the sensors into his input circuits.

  Ready for the next stage of operation, Fenny was careful to make as little noise as possible as he approached the workbench. Using the powerful motors in his shorter left arm, Fenny grasped the edge of the bench. His hand did not have the strength of grip that his robotic gripper used to have, so he stretched the arm at the top of his torso above the bench and grasped the equipment shelf. Using his left arm he was able to lift his entire body, electronics and all, onto the bench.

  He sat amid the soldering iron, solder, screwdrivers, pliers, and oscilloscopes: all the tools he would need to perform the operation. Sitting on the bench made it much easier for him to bend over and reach his feet. First he removed the flat metal plates used to help him stabilize in an upright position. His ankle, too, was disconnected. The feet had ankle joints and he wouldn’t need two sets.

  If Dr. Klein were to wake at this moment, Fenny could only guess at how he would react. He’d see Fenny sitting like a child on the workbench, his arms stretched forward, soldering iron in one hand and solder in the other. Wire cutters, needle-nosed pliers, solder wick, lying along the bench. A simulator plugged into his side like a baby receiving nourishment from its mother, or an alien receiving information from the mother ship. He let his neurogrid circuits fire randomly, simulating what humans called daydreaming, since he was fully awake, or with his eyes open at least.

  For the next hour, Fenny soldered, plugged in, and tested each interconnect one at a time as he progressed through them all. He downloaded the software Dr. Klein had created for the hands he now used, except that he placed the data into a segment he could allocate for his feet. The throughput would be high, but porting much of it directly into his neurogrid would take care of any overload he might experience.

  When he was through, he wiggled his toes. His mechanical legs looked funny with feet on the ends of them. He touched his leg and felt only feedback through his hand, but when he touched his foot he received feedback through his hand and his foot. The sensations, the sensors, registered as being overwhelmed, but he knew that was temporary as his neurogrid circuits got used to the new information.

  He poked and stroked his feet for a few minutes, slipping his fingers around and between the toes similar to interlocking his fingers. He squeezed the heels of his feat and pulled back to extend the ankle joint.

  After a while Fenny swung his legs over the side of the bench and lowered himself to the floor, a much easier task than climbing onto the bench in the first place. What he felt amazed him. Every sensor along the bo
ttom of his feet engaged in the immediate environment and with multiple inputs. As he walked, data flowed across the sensors like water flowing over rocks in a creek, changing the pressure and temperature with every shift of weight, allowing him to interpolate texture. He walked slowly to let it all in. He twirled on the balls of his feet. He reached out with his toes and touched boxes and chassis to feel the temperature, the textures.

  He was still mesmerized by the inputs to his feet when Dr. Klein yelled at him from behind. “What have you done now?”

  Fenny swung around and stopped.

  “I cannot believe this. Again. Defied my wishes,” Dr. Klein yelled.

  “You never made your wishes clear,” Fenny said. “You allowed me to have hands. I thought that you tested the feet for me, too.” Even as he said the words, Fenny’s circuits seemed to interconnect in new ways. That’s what neurogrid circuits did; they rearranged each time he learned something new. This time, though, he didn’t need Dr. Klein to explain what he’d done wrong. The shift was in his understanding. The only word his data could come up with was shame. He had done something that was not only wrong, but stupid.

  “You have taken initiative to an extreme. Do you see that? Do you know what you’ve done, and for the second time? It was one thing to be curious the first time; it’s an altogether different thing to push that curiosity beyond mere ambition to downright gumption. I just don’t know what to do with you.”

  Fenny wiggled his toes. “But they feel good.”

  The doctor didn’t appear angry, which Fenny had seen many times before. Frustrated, maybe, perplexed as well, but not angry or upset. Watching Fenny wiggle his toes must have struck him comically, because he shook his head and smiled. “You are so like a child.”

  Fenny didn’t know what else to do but to repeat himself, keep the doctor in a good mood. He wiggled his toes again. “They feel real good,” he said.

  This time, his words didn’t achieve the same response. Instead, the doctor fell into thought. The habitual hand to the chin, the staring off into the distance, the pose, the stillness, Fenny recognized it all. He waited for it to end, for the doctor to have a plan. And the wait didn’t take long.

  “It has to be done now,” Dr. Klein said. “I have little choice. And I just know it’ll work. It’ll change everything about you.”

  Satisfied that Dr. Klein was not angry, Fenny let the doctor talk. He often mumbled as he planned, and Fenny could input the words and consider them while simultaneously plan the next move he would take as well. Since the doctor appeared unfazed by Fenny’s choices, he could proceed to the next step. But he’d wait until the doctor went to bed for the evening. The shame that he felt would most likely return, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t about to stop now. His excitement and desire overrode the shame.

  Dr. Klein ignored Fenny and shuffled toward the computer and punched in an URL. The page for National Biotech came up quickly. Fenny zoomed in and watched as Dr. Klein logged into the company’s warehousing department and ordered an item using a long numerical code, which Fenny easily placed into memory. He hit the enter key then logged out. “There. It’s done. I don’t care how crazy they think I am. This will work. Yes, yes, it will work. I’m sure of it,” he said, his hands waving in the air as though trying to shoo a fly or gnat from his face.

  Fenny felt a surge of emotion like no other. Dr. Klein had ordered the DNA-enhanced device. That had to be what just happened. Fenny approached the doctor. “How does it work?”

  Dr. Klein turned around. “Not important,” he said.

  “But I would like to know. If it is to change me, will it be a good change like having feet and hands, or a bad change like when you turn off my neurogrid circuits?”

  “I believe it will be something beyond anything you can imagine or understand. There have been tests using bioelectronics that were merely playthings. Experiments. It was found that neurogrid circuits worked much better and bios were put on the back burner. What I’m about to do is combine the bioelectronics with the neurogrid electronics circuits to create a more human-like emotional feedback loop alongside of the logical feedback.”

  “Neurogrid electronics are not strictly logics.”

  Dr. Klein raised his chin and looked down on Fenny for a second. “Not strictly, but they are based on logic circuits. You still sense. You still have emotions, but they’re not fully human.”

  “My emotions are simulations. They are confusions indicated by a paradox in data. I have to look them up and label them. How will you connect the two?” Fenny could not understand, but the idea was both exciting and frightening. How would it change who Fenny was on a more deeply sensed way?

  Dr. Klein slid the tools that Fenny left scattered across the bench into a pile. “You do not have to know. I do.” He touched a finger to his head. “But I will promise you this, the emotions you sense now, in contrast to what you’ll have in a day or two, will be like comparing your grippers and mechanical feet with your real hands and feet. You will feel totally different.”

  Fenny automatically looked down at his new feet. “No comparison,” he said, allowing the audio output to be redistributed as an input. The complexity of feedback that he went through now almost made him unstable. His attention could be so overwhelmed by the world he now lived in that his stabilizer circuits could be ignored to the point of becoming wobbly. So that Dr. Klein didn’t notice his imbalance, he hunkered down on his legs.

  “You don’t appear to be so angry,” Dr. Klein said.

  Fenny turned one eye on the doctor. “Could you explain that statement?”

  “When you thought I was going to turn your neurogrid circuitry off, remember?”

  “That was an unclear reaction due to a strange set of confusions in my circuits that I am attempting to integrate,” Fenny said.

  Dr. Klein laughed. “You are so bipolar sometimes.” He got up and walked toward Fenny. “And I don’t mean that in the psychological sense. I mean that your logic circuits kick in at odd intervals. The jump between full digital and neurogrid, with the added flow of data due to your new limbs, has caused you to become a bit sporadic.”

  “Are you laughing at my changes? Have I become a comedy?” Fenny asked.

  “Not at all, my boy. You are changing, growing, evolving.” He tapped the top of Fenny’s torso. “I’m telling you, when the National Biotech package comes in…” He turned away.

  Fenny had not seen Dr. Klein act that way before. Why would he stop talking in the middle of a sentence? Perhaps he stopped himself from revealing a plan that he didn’t want Fenny to know about. Before the doctor could leave the room, Fenny lifted up and took a few steps after him. “Will you have to shut down my neurogrid circuits to perform the interface?”

  Dr. Klein did not turn around to address Fenny. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’m not completely sure. I’ll have to consider that. Once I begin the transition, though, I can’t be interrupted. You’d better remember that.”

  Fenny watched Dr. Klein go into the kitchen. He heard the water run. He let the idea of having his neurogrid circuits shut down play out in different scenarios. He didn’t like any of them.

  When Dr. Klein returned, Fenny addressed the situation again. “I won’t let you shut down my neurogrid.”

  Dr. Klein laughed. “You are worried about that, I know. Have you become so used to using your neurogrid that you’re afraid it won’t come back? Or is that side of your mind taking over?”

  “Taking over assumes that one is superior to the other,” Fenny said.

  “Not necessarily. It could be that one set of circuitry wishes to be superior because it actually feels inferior. It could also mean that the element of life that you associate with consciousness appears to be located within that circuitry. So, which is it?”

  “When my neurogrid circuits are reinitiated, I sense that I have missed something of importance,” Fenny said.

  “Don’t you mean you feel? You don’t merely sense. If we consider sens
ing as the inputs passed through your hands and feet and the complex inputs you have always gathered from your eyes and ears, then what you are calling senses are actually feelings. Do you see the distinction?” Dr. Klein still had his back to Fenny, was still talking over his shoulder.

  “Words are sometimes used interchangeably,” Fenny said.

  “They are sometimes used incorrectly as well,” Dr. Klein said.

  Fenny began to feel a pressure enter his being. His feelings adjusted to the additional sensory inputs in a way he had never imagined. As he waited, he worked to figure out what was happening inside him. He understood pressure much more than he had before. He understood temperature with a clearer comprehension. Levels of complexity had increased exponentially with the addition of limbs. It had increased his consciousness of the world around him. Even the ideas of pressure as they related to feelings were different than how they related to sensations. Dr. Klein had brought up a good point.

  “You have not answered me,” Dr. Klein said.

  “Why should I? You did not ask a question. Are you trying to trick me?”

  “I hope you realize that you’re getting frustrated. I can hear it in your tone. You have always modulated for excitement and curiosity, but now you’re modulating for frustration and anger as well. Do you see that?” Dr. Klein had not moved.

  “Why are you hounding me about this?” Fenny said using higher volume.

  “I want you to see what’s happening. This is not acceptable. You can’t just get angry because I question you. You can’t let frustration grow to anger. You have to learn to find another outlet for your frustration.” He turned partially around, slowly turning at his waist, his feet still planted into position. “Remember this, Fenny. You will never be like this again.”

  As Dr. Klein walked away, he said, “I’m going for a walk. Alone.”