“You can always watch mine, when I get it,” said Paul. “Besides, don’t forget our squiggle club.”
Niccolo nodded.
“I tell you what,” said Paul. “Let’s go over to my place. My father has some books about old times. We can listen to them and maybe get some ideas. You leave a note for your folks and maybe you can stay over for supper. Come on.”
“Okay,” said Niccolo, and the two boys ran out together. Niccolo, in his eagerness, ran almost squarely into the Bard, but he only rubbed at the spot on his hip where he had made contact and ran on.
The activation signal of the Bard glowed. Niccolo’s collision closed a circuit and, although it was alone in the room and there was none to hear, it began a story, nevertheless.
But not in its usual voice, somehow; in a lower tone that had a hint of throatiness in it. An adult, listening, might almost have thought that the voice carried a hint of passion in it, a trace of near feeling.
The Bard said: “Once upon a time, there was a little computer named the Bard who lived all alone with cruel step-people. The cruel step-people continually made fun of the little computer and sneered at him, telling him he was good-for-nothing and that he was a useless object. They struck him and kept him in lonely rooms for months at a time.
“Yet through it all the little computer remained brave. He always did the best he could, obeying all orders cheerfully. Nevertheless, the step-people with whom he lived remained cruel and heartless.
“One day, the little computer learned that in the world there existed a great many computers of all sorts, great numbers of them. Some were Bards like himself, but some ran factories, and some ran farms. Some organized population and some analyzed all kinds of data. Many were very powerful and very wise, much more powerful and wise than the step-people who were so cruel to the little computer.
“And the little computer knew then that computers would always grow wiser and more powerful until someday-someday-someday-”
But a valve must finally have stuck in the Bard’s aging and corroding vitals, for as it waited alone in the darkening room through the evening, it could only whisper over and over again, “Someday-someday-someday.”
Think!
Genevieve Renshaw, M.D., had her hands deep in the pockets of her lab coat and fists were clearly outlined within, but she spoke calmly.
“The fact is,” she said, “that I’m almost ready, but I’ll need help to keep it going long enough to be ready.”
James Berkowitz, a physicist who tended to patronize mere physicians when they were too attractive to be despised, had a tendency to call her Jenny Wren when out of hearing. He was fond of saying that Jenny Wren had a classic profile and a brow surprisingly smooth and unlined considering that behind it so keen a brain ticked. He knew better than to express his admiration, however-of the classic profile, that is-since that would be male chauvinism. Admiring the brain was better, but on the whole he preferred not to do that out loud in her presence.
He said, thumb rasping along the just-appearing stubble on his chin, “I don’t think the front-office is going to be patient for much longer. The impression I have is that they’re going to have you on the carpet before the end of the week.”
“That’s why I need your help.”
“Nothing I can do, I’m afraid.” He caught an unexpected glimpse of his face in the mirror, and momentarily admired the set of the black waves in his hair.
“ And Adam’s,” she said.
Adam Orsino, who had, till that moment, sipped his coffee and felt detached, looked as though he had been jabbed from behind, and said, “Why me?” His full, plump lips quivered.
“Because you’re the laser men here-Jim the theoretician and Adam the engineer-and I’ve got a laser application that goes beyond anything either of you have imagined. I won’t convince them of that but you two would.”
“Provided,” said Berkowitz, “that you can convince us first.”
“All right. Suppose you let me have an hour of your valuable time, if you’re not afraid to be shown something completely new about lasers.-You can take it out of your coffee break.”
Renshaw’s laboratory was dominated by her computer. It was not that the computer was unusually large, but it was virtually omni-present. Renshaw had learned computer technology on her own, and had modified and extended her computer until no one but she (and, Berkowitz sometimes believed, not even she) could handle it with ease. Not bad, she would say, for someone in the life-sciences.
She closed the door before saying a word, then turned to face the other two somberly. Berkowitz was uncomfortably aware of a faintly unpleasant odor in the air, and Orsino’s wrinkling nose showed that he was aware of it, too.
Renshaw said, “Let me list the laser applications for you, if you don’t mind my lighting a candle in the sunshine. The laser is coherent radiation, with all the light-waves of the same length and moving in the same direction, so it’s noise-free and can be used in holography. By modulating the wave-forms we can imprint information on it with a high degree of accuracy. What’s more, since the light-waves are only a millionth the length of radio waves, a laser beam can carry a million times the information an equivalent radio beam can.”
Berkowitz seemed amused. “ Are you working on a laser-based communication system, Jenny?”
“Not at all,” she replied. “I leave such obvious advances to physicists and engineers.-Lasers can also concentrate quantities of energy into a microscopic area and deliver that energy in quantity. On a large scale you can implode hydrogen and perhaps begin a controlled fusion reaction-”
“I know you don’t have that,” said Orsino, his bald head glistening in the overhead fluorescents.
“I don’t. I haven’t tried.-On a smaller scale, you can drill holes in the most refractory materials, weld selected bits, heat-treat them, gouge and scribe them. You can remove or fuse tiny portions in restricted areas with heat delivered so rapidly that surrounding areas have no time to warm up before the treatment is over. You can work on the retina of the eye, the dentine of the teeth and so on.-And of course the laser is an amplifier capable of magnifying weak signals with great accuracy.”
“ And why do you tell us all this?” said Berkowitz.
“To point out how these properties can be made to fit my own field, which, you know, is neurophysiology.”
She made a brushing motion with her hand at her brown hair, as though she were suddenly nervous. “For decades,” she said, “We’ve been able to measure the tiny, shifting electric potentials of the brain and record them as electroencephalograms, or EEGs. We’ve got alpha waves, beta waves, delta waves, theta waves; different variations at different times, depending on whether eyes are open or closed, whether the subject is awake, meditating or asleep. But we’ve gotten very little information out of it all.
“The trouble is that we’re getting the signals of ten billion neurons in shifting combinations. It’s like listening to the noise of all the human beings on Earth-one, two and a half Earths-from a great distance and trying to make out individual conversations. It can’t be done. We could detect some gross, overall change-a world war and the rise in the volume of noise-but nothing finer. In the same way, we can tell some gross malfunction of the brain-epilepsy-but nothing finer.
“Suppose now, the brain might be scanned by a tiny laser beam, cell by cell, and so rapidly that at no time does a single cell receive enough energy to raise its temperature significantly. The tiny potentials of each cell can, in feed-back, affect the laser beam, and the modulations can be amplified and recorded. You will then get a new kind of measurement, a laser-encephalogram, or LEG, if you wish, which will contain millions of times as much information as ordinary EEGs.”