"You want me to what?" I practically screamed at him, but I didn't care. I couldn't believe what he was trying to convince me to do. I would never do it, no matter what he said. The idea was ludicrous and offensive on every level. "You want me to what?" I screamed again for good measure. If we weren't standing in a lab filled with expensive equipment I would have thrown something at him. What I needed was a door. I could slam the door in his face with the added benefit of then leaving. I glanced around for the door we had just come through, but I had been so MESMERIZED by what he was telling me that I hadn't been paying attention. The lab was huge, and he had never let me accompany him into it before. Usually, we said goodbye outside on the sidewalk. Looking back on it, that seemed kind of weird. Was he doing top secret sciencey stuff in here or what?
"Wait. You've already done some experiments. What does that mean? You've done experiments on ME?" My voice had risen another octave and I felt the beakers on the table beside us vibrate a little. I lowered my voice. "What. Exactly. Have. You. Done?" I asked slowly and calmly, stepping closer to him with each word. Forcing him across the room and backing him up against the wall. I tapped my foot impatiently. Surely he did not just tell me that he had been doing experiments on me. Me! His girlfriend. That had to be against some ethical code or another. Maybe that hippo whatever guy.
Finally, he spoke, "Actually, I was doing them on myself. Remember this morning when you stole the "juice" out of the fridge and I freaked out? That was the serum. I'd been administering one ounce per day to myself and calculating the results. You drank approximately 5 ounces in one sitting. I had no idea at the time what an overdose of that magnitude would result in."
OK, so he hadn't experimented on me on purpose, but it was still weird.
"Haven't you felt any effects?" he asked with his notebook in hand.
"Not really." I said. "but like what kind of effects?"
"Enhanced perception, greater speed in reading, ability to solve complex mathematical equations...?" he trailed off at my blank look.
"No. Not really. Well earlier I was thinking that it was likely that you had signed the Official Secrets Act and were performing clandestine experiments here for the government. Then I thought that doing experiments on me surely violated the Hippocratic Oath, and finally I thought that there was no way that glass of juice was 5 ounces. More like 4.35 since I didn't fill it all the way to the top." I stopped at that revelation and decided that maybe he had a point. How had I gone from thinking "that hippo whatever guy" to Hippocratic Oath. And how could I measure the amount of liquid in a glass retroactively. And how did I know what retroactively meant? It was hardly a word in my usual vocabulary.
I was starting to get scared, so I grabbed his arms and pulled him over to the sofa. Ok, start from the beginning.
"The shock of the serum entering your body in such a large dose has jump- started the neural prostheses and accelerated it's growth inside your brain. The short term result being the effects I described earlier. The same effects I have been enjoying to a lesser degree with the smaller dosage. The negative effect of your large dosage is that the prostheses is not contained in one section of the brain or regulated by the brain's own axons assisted by the self-assembled nanofiber scaffold that would have been introduced into the subject through a small incision in the ear--he turned his head slightly and pointed to his own ear--had you been part of the study." He stopped talking suddenly. But this time I understood why.
"The prostheses are taking over my brain. That's why you want to do amateur exploratory brain surgery on me in your top secret government lab. You want to wipe my memories and.. and you don't even care!" I pushed him away and jumped off the couch. I didn't want him touching me. He was repulsive. "How could you even suggest such a thing? This surgery you are proposing, even if it should be successful, would no doubt wipe my short term memory and much of my long term memory as well. There would be no guarantee that I would even retain the ability to understand language."
He followed me around the room. "But if we don't try." He stopped again. "If we don't try your brain will be consumed in..." he glanced at his watch, "41 hours. We need to do this now." He spoke sternly and I had the urge to obey him. He seemed so sure.
But I couldn't allow him to steal my memories. They were what made me who I was. What would I become if I allowed him to operate? Would it be any worse to allow the prosthesis to take over. Wouldn't I still be me, but with enhanced abilities? I paused in my thoughts. How was I to know if these thoughts I was having right now, the thoughts that the operation would be a mistake were not the thoughts of the prosthesis itself trying to maintain its own viability. Perhaps it was seeking to live just as I was.
"What are the precedents?" I finally asked. I wasn't going to let him decide this for me. For once I was his intellectual equal.
"Precedents? There are none; this was groundbreaking research into transhuman intelligence. After this the study will be abandoned and condemned. I will probably lose my tenure and everything will be hushed up. The precedents, if there ever were any have likewise been hushed up."
"Great." I muttered. He was a lot of help. I began to pace the room thinking aloud. "So my choices are 1. have brain surgery and maybe become a vegetable, certainly forget everything for about the last 6 months possibly more. Or 2. not have brain surgery and maybe become a walking robot with a mechanical mind, certainly not myself." During all this I had been doodling on some papers left carelessly on the lab table. I glanced at them briefly. Equations and diagrams. They couldn't help me. I had to decide.
"Do you smell that? Is that toast?"
Комментарии