They connected the final data feed to the test subjects skull, shaved gleaming in the bright light of the laboratory. A clutch of wires grew from the base of his skull and spread out in all directions, leading to servers and computer systems racked up one upon another, their status lights twinkling like soft little green eyes, fairies or fireflies in strict unison.
The technicians cleared away from the cocoon in the center of the room. That’s what the techs had taken to calling it. They’d inserted a fully grown but heavily modified human being into stasis chair and over the weeks rebuilt him. His eyes were mostly flesh, or at least pods of protein jelly, like they were at his “birth” (uncorking), but millions photoreceptors had been built in the place of retinas by swarms of nanotech viruses. The nanites were injected through any intravenous port and swarm like salmon upstream, up the blood stream, to their destination to create and then die; broken apart by the subjects existing augmented white blood cells. What they left behind was then patched into an ever growing lattice of subcutaneous neural networks, data highways, also paved by nanoscopic engineers.
Outside the laboratory, Janet Hilden twisted a cigarette in her fingers. She sat in front three monitors, each feeding her graphic representations of data she could have rattled off while sleeping. Her work with synthetic tissue growth and nanite reconstruction was nothing short of miraculous.
But that was all child’s play compared to what she was about to do. She knew it would work, of course, or she never would have attempted it. The process was simple – translation of human thought, that is, chemo-electrical signals to electrical signals, base machine code that could be run through any one of her numerous peripheral processors. The Subject would control machines with thought. As the designated moment became clearer and closer, she continued manipulating the cigarette.
“Going to light it?” asked Paul. She turned her pale green eyes to regard him, spinning her body slowly in her chair with a deft motion of her foot.
“Paul, do you have any idea what’s about to happen in the next room.”
“Some.” He shrugged. She despised him when he played stupid. He was handpicked from a catalogue of researchers, grad students, mumbling PhDs, and god-knows-who-else. The experiment in the room next him was as much his baby as it was hers.
“So, you’ve nothing witty to say when we break down the last barrier and free humanity from the greatest bottle-neck of traffic we’ve ever seen and will ever know?”
“You’re referring to the ability to interface with computers as fast as thought.”
“Obviously.” She sighed, rolling her eyes. She spun the smoke one last time and lit it.
“I’ve some thoughts, I suppose.” He said, waving the smoke from his face.
“Well, Pauly, care to share?”
“Yeah. Um… Maybe we shouldn’t?”
