One reason for this pre-briefing is to make you familiar with the task and a crude map of what’s down there. Our job is to install RFID repeater-chips every half meter along all the pipes and mains we can reach, so this part of the underworld can join the World Mesh. Currently, it’s way dark down there! And with no link it’s possible to get lost. Really lost! So remember the buddy system.
We must keep a good pace, ’cause another crew will be right behind us, staple-gluing data strand to the roof of the sewer. A startup company wants to compete with cable and phone conduit providers. They aim to use sewage rights-of-way to deliver fiber cable to every toilet-I mean, every home-in America. (A far-raki idea! I’m already invested.)
Finally, each of you will be given a siphon bottle and a sack. We’ll show you how to find low spots in the sewer that may have collected pools of mercury, across the last century or two. Suck those little deposits into the bottle. The bag is in case you spot saltpeter crystals along the way. Or coins. There are a dozen other treasures to look out for-one more reason to pay attention to this briefing.
Phos prices are up and you can trade whatever you find for zep rides or driz, when we get back to our big dome-home.
30.
The shunt caused a strange kind of agony. The worst since the zeppelin explosion left her body a roasted shell.
Even the word itself felt painful, in a way, because it was misleading. Like other journalists of a new generation, Tor disliked the mushy inexactitude of earlier correspondents-their propensity for oversimplification and loosey-juicy metaphor. To be precise then, the “shunt” that doctors and technicians were installing into her brain was not a single tube or wire. It consisted of more than ten thousand separate pathways that started out as tiny holes, drilled into her skull.
From there, minuscule, trail-blazing automatons probed inward, proceeding cautiously. Minimizing damage to fragile axons, dendrites, and neural clusters, where calcium ions surged and electro-chemical potentials flared, all contributing to the vast standing wave of composite human consciousness. Skirting all of that, as much as possible, the microscopic machines instead navigated their way inward via giant astrocyte cells, using them as fatty corridors, while each little crawler tugged a slender fiber behind it, until the final destination-some well-mapped center of communication, vision, or motor control-lay just ahead.
Tor appreciated the lack of pain receptors inside a human brain. Or so assured the doctors, in tinny voices that crackled down the remnants of her auditory system-those portions that had not been seared away by the zeppelin explosion. In fact, the creeping nano-robots should not trigger any conspicuous reaction at all, as they made their way to preplanned positions in the visual cortex, the cerebellum, the anterior cingulate, the left temporal lobe… and a host of other crucial nexi, scattered through Tor’s intricately folded cerebrum. That is, not until they were ready to start their real work-probing and testing, mapping old connections and creating new ones that might-possibly-let her see again, and hear and speak after a fashion.
And perhaps… science willing… even move and walk and…
But it seemed better not to dwell too much on hope. So instead, Tor clinically envisioned what was going on inside her head. Imagination perceived the machine incursion as a benign army of penetrating needles-or invading mites-crawling inexorably inward, forcing their way past all barriers of decency, into a sanctum that had once been ultimately private. Or, as private as anything could be, in this modern world.
Then, upon arriving at its destined station, each little robot began poking! Jabbing and zapping the tips of selected dendrites, sometimes achieving nothing, or else triggering instantaneous reactions-a speck of “light”… a twinge of her left big toe… the smell of roasted pine nuts… a sudden hankering to see, once again, her girlhood pet retriever, Daffy.
Reacting with disorientation, even nausea, Tor soon felt warm countercurrents flow-undoubtedly drugs meant to keep her body calm and mind alert-as the doctors began to make demands upon her, asking about each sensorimotor effect.
Irritated by their yattering, for a brief time she considered withholding cooperation. But that impulse didn’t last. As if they would let me refuse. Anyway, to do so-in order to tell them off-Tor would have to speak, to make her wishes understood by some means other than tooth-taps in Morse code. Till then, she would be ruled incompetent, a ward of the state and of her company’s insurance plan, lacking any legal right to make them all bug off!
So, Tor clicked her canines and bicuspids, in order to answer simple questions-such as identifying “left” and “right,” “up” and “down,” when bright smudges began to appear, triggered by probes that stimulated different parts of her visual cortex. And soon, what had started as gross blobs began resolving into ever smaller pixel-like points, or slender rays, or slanting bars that crossed from one side to another… as some computer gradually learned the cipher of her own, unique way of seeing.
Everyone’s different, I hear. Our inner images map onto the same reality as other people see-the same streetlights and billboards and such. Each of us claims to perceive identical surroundings. We all call the sky “blue.” And yet, the actual experience of sight-the “qualia”-is said to be peculiar to each person. Our brains are not logically planned. They evolve-every one of us, in that sense, becoming her own species.
Tor realized she was reciting, as if for her vraudience! Parsing clear sentences, even though there was-so far-no subvocal transceiver to convey her words around the world. Or even across the room. It seemed that habit, sometimes a dear friend, was drawing her back into the role of reporter and raconteur. And, even without a public to appreciate it-she still deemed it good, a source of pleasure and pride, to shape rounded sentences. To describe what was happening-that offered her a glimmering sense of power, amid utter powerlessness.
Part of me survived, whole. Maybe the best part.
Not that Tor was ever entirely alone. There were the human specialists and computer-voiced aidviser programs hired by MediaCorp to take care of their superstar. And, ensuring that she never felt abandoned in the darkness, there was the voice of the mob-the smart-mob she had called up, aboard the Spirit of Chula Vista. It never left her side… though individual members came and went. Whenever the hospital allowed it, during frequent breaks and visitor hours, that composite voice returned to keep Tor company, to read to her, or else keep her up with current events.
What would I have done, if there had been deeper brain damage? she wondered. Injury that prevented the reception and “hearing” of auditory input, for example? The voices in her head kept her sane. They were her link to the real world.
And so, between medical sessions, when her tooth ached from tapping a million yes and no answers-helping identify the scattered and minute segments of her rebuilding brain-she was also fed a steady description of each day’s news. Naturally, that included the planetary fascination with a stone from interstellar space-the Livingstone Object. But there were also reports on a hard-pressed search for the zeppelin saboteurs. Those who murdered poor Warren and left her in this state, encased in a life-sustaining cocoon.
Tor’s direct recollections of that episode were a bit murky-trauma often prevented the firm anchoring of memories of some shattering event. She did remember Warren as a set of clipped impressions… along with images of a cathedral filled with tall, colored columns that bulged and throbbed menacingly. No doubt, some of it was just a visual reconstruction, based on things she had been told-about her own valorous actions.