Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction

  “Then it has no trouble detector?” I said to jar him a little. As we thought of it, a suppressor prevents a dangerous act. A trouble detector was a higher level knowledge-fiber that looked at other higher-level k-fibers and warded off conflicts the unconscious didn’t want to deal with. Or didn’t want the conscious mind to know.

  “I suppose not. That’s why dreams are so gaudy.”

  “Sure, they violate social norms. It’s their job.”

  SanJi looked worried by this and his brow furrowed. He watched the storm and jerked when a lightning flash cast searing light into the office.

  I decided to press him harder. “Does it have agents that can easily switch between representations?”

  “I … don’t know. It’s hard to describe seeing it, feeling it.”

  “Why? Is it murky?”

  “It’s not like seeing something. Being in konn is … well, thinking things only they aren’t your thoughts.”

  “You don’t control them?”

  “You can’t. I tried.”

  “So a k-fiber turns on a particular set of agents? Then it runs and—”

  “They run in the background. They can’t be bothered by the conscious mind intruding. Something blocks that.”

  “What’s it feel like?”

  “I was outside her mind but in it in … well, a different way. I could experience chunks of reasoning going by. Bits of language. Memory flashes. It was powerful, I can tell you that. And fast.”

  We called them k-fibers because they turn on sets of agents and can cause a cascade of effects within a mind. “You felt emotions come in?”

  “Yes…” His eyes followed the big-bellied purple clouds. “Like this weather. They override the k-fibers.”

  That fit our ideas but was hard to fit into neural models like the ones I built. The brain has rule-based mechanisms we call selectors that turn on emotions. They sweep k-lines before them, taking over a problem and forcing a solution.

  SanJi said, “We build multiple models of ourselves. They fight inside us.”

  He seemed to be drawing away from me, turning inward. To draw him out I said, “It’s hard to model deep-rooted neurotic anxiety, phobias, panic attacks, or obsessive-compulsive disorders. Why?”

  “Because some model we have of ourselves is fighting for its life. I—” he said suddenly, then stopped.

  I tried to catch his eye. “Look, I’m going into konn with her soon. I want you to know that.”

  SanJi stiffened but didn’t take his eyes from the storm.

  Even in the chilly lab context it was strangely intimate. I knew generally about the connectivity issues and the tests they both had to run through. The lab techs were bored and didn’t try to hide it.

  Aliim lay there and said little. So did I. This was research after all but I felt my heart accelerate in the quiet shadowy pod. I marveled at how small the EEG electrodes were wrapped around our heads. The techs did some run-throughs and then we just went to sleep.

  I kept myself distant using the sleep control methods the EEG augments allowed. I felt the konn enter through slow wave sleep. It was like riding a beat-up surfboard in the lazy afternoons of my boyhood. Slow waves rose warm and slow and synchronized. I felt the pulsing surges dominate my cortex. My years of study allowed me to sense that in this phase of sleep, slow wave activities were recorded, filtered, and fed back to Aliim and me. I felt the clock shop effect kick in. Long ago artisans noticed that mechanical clocks placed against a wall that could transmit vibrations would all eventually tell the same time.

  I slipped into a sure steady resonance, the clock shop phase, rising fast and then I lost it—

  Bursting yellow light fell across on a sheeting blue plain. Speckled green things moved on it in staccato rhythm—

  I was inside her mind. I knew it was her unconscious because I tried to send her messages and there was dead silence, no response. So I relaxed and let it wash over me.

  Twisting lines meshed there and wove into triangles. Frantic energy pulsed along these as they warped into strange saddle-pointed envelopes. Electric blue light played along them as they coiled into new soundless shapes—

  A shrill grating sound made me turn my head. Flashes of crimson.

  Thick, rich red foam lapped against bright yellow lines. Must be circuits, I thought and with that a weathered brass thing towered beside me. It oozed slime. I felt sudden cold panic. I wanted to watch the landscape below as the tower groaned and spun softly.

  I could see through its brassy skin. Inside it shimmering drops beaded on a coppery matrix of wire. They oozed prickly flashes with a rattling sound.

  I had to force myself to look away from it. Thudding sounds hammered in the air. Salty air washed over me. I shivered.

  I tried to watch the intricate play of light along the swarming geometries. In quick pulses I felt in rapid play: surprise, joy, a sheeting trembling fear. I had to ignore these flickers of emotion to see the patterns moving along wiry paths. Trembling sprays of glowing orange fought across the brass tower and it seemed to move toward me. Knowledge-fibers?

  Fear won. I turned and ran. Hot sweat trickled into my eyes—

  —Upward, toward the watery light—

  I was awake. Her eyes were closed, face empty.

  I came away from it awkwardly on legs of cotton.

  I woke in the night, sweating. I rolled over tangled in the bedclothes, muttering in the dark.

  I had seen all that again. Not as it happened on konn but in shots of sudden seeing. Not nightmares, not precisely. Something else. Something intermediate.

  I had seen now an ellipsoidal sun spinning soundlessly over a silver array that danced with silver glows. A fine-spun coppery matrix simmering on the sharp horizon. The grainy sheen of polyhedra that radiated hard golden light. When patterns merged, I felt my bones hum in resonance.

  I got up and made coffee and went for a walk on the beach. This was one of the preserved beaches and I could see the bulwarks holding back the ocean, a flat line on the horizon. The sun was a hazy yellow blob above the heaving sea that lapped nearby.

  She came to my home and walked right in without knocking. “I wondered why I did not hear from you.”

  “I … took time to process the konn.”

  “I always hear from those who commune with me.”

  “It was … strange.”

  We were both standing and she simply reached out and cupped my balls, hefting them. “It can be better if we do other things too.” Her clear eyes looked directly into mine.

  “I cannot afford the research expense.” This was a lie and I tried to keep my voice flat.

  “I will wait.” She turned and walked out.

  I had not seen SanJi since the konn. I was in a garden on the grounds of the Bezos Institute where he and I work, finishing a small lunch of sushi when I saw him walking toward me.

  I got up to greet him. He came toward me with intent and his mouth a flat white line. I said hello and he threw his right fist at my head. I ducked to the side and automatically brought my hands up.

  He said nothing. Once I saw his rigid face I didn’t either.

  I had trained with a virtual-space exercise sim in simple boxing when I was fifteen and to my surprise in the next half minute it all came back to me.

  SanJi jabbed at me with his left but I brushed those aside on my right forearm and shoulder. He was shorter than me and moved fast and around looking for an advantage. His right was hanging back. I knew he wanted to distract me with the left and let the right do the work but he let it out too far. In the sim that had been a whole lesson, I recalled. Why letting your big hand drift away took all the power from it.

  He had been a dancer once he had said and I could see it in how he moved. His eyes gave nothing away and his feet were quick as I tried jabs and hooks. I felt like I was just swatting at him.

  I glanced aside to see if anyone would break this up but there was nobody else in the little garden. So we would just have to hav
e it out.

  “What’s this about?” I said to make him think about something other than my left hand.

  His slice of a mouth didn’t change and he said nothing. I let my left dance in front of his nose and then brought my right around hard against the side of his head. I could feel his ear crunch but he showed no reaction. He just backed off a bit to get himself together and then came in again with eyes narrowed.

  SanJi tried a flurry of punches that I rode out with my forearms but took a hard shot in my left shoulder that rocked me around some. I used some footwork I recalled from that sim training to get him worked around with his right hand even farther out. The way he held it out long told me he wanted to use it so before he could I made a swipe with my own right. He blocked it well enough with a quick left. In that thin slice of time I brought my left hard into an uppercut that tagged his nose.

  I could feel it squash. Blood spurted into his eye and I caught him hard in his left cheek with a knuckle punch. He staggered back and wobbled and I hit him in the gut. He went down in a sprawl. Not a hard fall, more like he just realized he would be more comfortable sitting down.

  He looked up and me and still said nothing. I turned and walked away. Later, I realized I had left my lunch behind.

  I was sitting in a harborside restaurant where tourists did not go, doing a watercolor of the harbor and islands beyond. A little girl came up and said, “What are you doing?”

  “Painting a picture,” I said. I showed her my palette.

  She studied it.”You’re not very good, are you?”

  That made me laugh. She was quite right, of course.

  I felt better now than I had in days. After the fight I had pursued a sort of Zen mindfulness, purchased with pain. I finished the watercolor and saw what the little girl had seen but I in my quick moves to capture the light in color had not. I crumpled it up.

  The dreams from the konn had blown away and this morning I had an idea when I awoke. That was the first time in many weeks and to celebrate I had come out for a long breakfast and the watercolor. The idea I would test in my lab later but I knew enough to just let my mind nibble at the idea first while I did something else.

  Only then did I see that Aliim was sitting on the far side of the restaurant.

  My first reaction was a quick flash of chilly dislike. Her face swam before me like a pillar of Freudian nightmare. She was playing with the foxy thing and sipping coffee. As usual, she elegantly wore an ivory sarong and simple green sandals, no more.

  As I approached her table she looked up and a flicker of wary evasion passed in her face. But she put it away and even gave a thin smile. “How goes your research?”

  “Quite well,” I said and did not sit.

  “Mine as well.”

  “And what is…?” I felt tense and her eyes never left mine.

  “I too am mapping knowledge-fiber networks. My method however is not yours.”

  “No doubt.” She had never declared her research area before. “I did gain some insights from our konn.”

  “I, too. Perhaps another session would be useful?” She lifted her cup and I saw a tremor there where none had been before.

  “I am quite busy just now.”

  “I would require a higher fee, of course. I gave you the introductory session at a low rate and already I am well booked.”

  “I doubt that I can afford you then.”

  “That is too bad. I had hoped to help you.”

  “As you have helped many.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing. I gather that SanJi has worked with you?”

  We both knew he had but she said, “I am not responsible in any way for his work. Or his reactions.”

  I did not know what to say and her fox was nipping around my shoes. It stood on its two hind legs and looked up at me with its hard gleaming eyes and yipped little words I finally noticed were “yeee!” and “go!” and “bad!” and “hurt!”

  “I never said you were.”

  In a flinty way she said, “That is good. No matter what others may say.”

  As I looked back the fox was still dancing and the restaurant owner was coming over to her about the noise.

  I did not see SanJi for a while though he worked near my lab. I was in there a lot working on the notion that my unconscious had given me. It had proved to be quite a gift. The layered approach I worked out gave simpler pathways to understanding how our k-fibers organize prior ideas in the cause of new solutions. It demanded that neurotrophic factors cohere in a way I could model with appropriate cofactor mathematics. There were geometric analogies to this that made the whole idea easy to visualize. That is what had come to me that morning when I awoke with the odd notion buzzing in my mind. It was a while before I realized that the geometry came first and the images were like those I had seen in the konn.

  I was mulling this over and my conversation with Aliim in the orchid garden one morning before walking to the Institute to begin anew. I was finishing my coffee when I saw SanJi sitting nearby.

  I decided to ignore him but he came over and deliberately sat down near me on a bench. His face was drawn and pale and he had lost weight. “It has been a while.”

  I looked at him squarely and readied myself but caught myself balling up my fists. I made myself relax them. “Your nose shows no damage.”

  “It did not break.”

  “I am glad.”

  “I want to tell you that was not me you were hitting.”

  “Felt like it.”

  “I was in a state I cannot describe. I did not know what I was doing.”

  “Your right hand didn’t but your left sure did. I had bruises for a week.”

  He allowed himself a flat smile. “I came to that state through that woman.”

  We didn’t need to say her name. “For me the konn with her was useful.”

  “She was in some vague way planning to do research. Meanwhile living off the earnings from her talent.”

  “Research? Into neural nets? I had the impression she was some sort of mathematician but—”

  “The incubation period is several weeks.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is not just an unusual konn patient and resource. It develops now that she has a neuvir.”

  “I thought that was just theory.”

  “It is real. I have it.”

  “From her?”

  “The only possible path. It made me do this.” He swung fists in the air.

  “Why me then?”

  “I do not know. Some anger she held against you? The neurological virus term is only an analogy. The constellation of ideas somehow becomes self-propagating. The knowledge-fiber can leave one unconscious and install in another. It infests.”

  “Under konn.”

  “The theory was there but I find the experience is very different. It was a frenzy.”

  “So you don’t know why me.”

  “It must have been her anger. I was merely the agent.”

  “I had konn with her and I have not felt any such effect.”

  “You had one konn. I had five.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “There are others who had long exposures. They had outbursts, too.”

  “Fights?”

  “A few. Some extreme sports, too. All men. With women they would get drunk in bars and take men home. This among calm ordinary women who had never done any such thing. It caused a lot of damage.”

  “There is a cure?”

  “There may be. I am under therapy but it is entirely experimental and ad hoc.”

  He did not seem like the old SanJi. He seldom smiled and when he did it turned down, not up. Something had been taken out of him.

  I did not want to ask him how it had been to be in that state. Maybe the nose was enough.

  He looked at me a long time as we said nothing. He took a long breath of the warm air and said, “I used to agree with the great Minsky that it was degrading or insul
ting to say that somebody is a good person or has a soul. I felt that each person has built this incredibly complex structure, spent a lifetime doing it. We try to map and understand that. If you attribute such majestic structure to a magical pearl in the middle of an oyster that makes you good, that is trivializing a person. That keeps you from thinking of what’s really happening.”

  “Um, yes.”

  “Now I am not so sure. There can be a pearl or a cinder of coal at the center. Which it is, that emerges from the whole elaborate structure around it.”

  “So it makes sense to say a person is evil. Maybe like Aliim.”

  “She is the cinder, yes.”

  I never saw her again.

  But I did get a request for information on konn experiences. I wrote a description and was astonished to see them appear, not in a technical paper, but on Net sites where people went for advice and to consult on the burgeoning phenomenon of konn. I protested but my comments remained there and reportedly many read them.

  I spent several years constructing my model. I specialized it to the neural anatomy of human emotion and got some success in predicting behaviors. It even held up well in a two hundred-person clinical trial in Singapore.

  I heard, about that time, what happened to Aliim. She had gone to Hong Kong to be a konn subject and had prospered until the neuvir effect turned up again. One of her subjects with the same k-fiber association transfer. The patient was a woman with considerable martial arts skills. She had gone to the sites where my comments appeared. I had made the mistake of naming Aliim there. She went to see Aliim, hired her, did considerable konn.

  Just like SanJi the woman turned on Aliim. She came into Aliim’s home and without a word began to beat her. Aliim did not know any fighting skills so the woman worked her over for hours. The Hong Kong police showed the in-home video. Aliim could not defend against the kicks, chops, neck blows, and head-butts. She died.