Steven James
Singularity
To Eddie Brittain and Rick Altizer
Friends for life
Epigraph
I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn’t work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.
It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen of the jury; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.
Part I
Interface
“Cream? Sugar?”
“No. Black. Thank you.” Thad Becker had learned early on in this business not to allow anyone to add things to his drinks or season what he ate. It was a delicate balance — showing trust and exhibiting prudence. But in the end you can either be careful or you can pay the price.
He accepted the cup from the person he’d come here to see: a dark-haired, fit, Caucasian man in his late fifties who called himself Akinsanya — a Nigerian name that meant “the hero avenges.”
Thad had done his research. It’d taken calling in quite a few favors, but he’d found out who the guy really was: a retired Army colonel named Derek Byrne. A former sniper instructor, Byrne was not a man to be trifled with.
He also knew about the kind of research Byrne was focused on here at Plyotech: a program that was not, according to any of the company’s books, actually taking place. It was the kind of research the people who’d hired Thad had expressed keen interest in: robotics, mechatronics, informatics.
And, of course, cybernetics.
Which was what had brought him here.
They were in a high-tech conference room down the hall from where Byrne and his team did surgery on the primates, inserting the electrodes into their brains to see if the chimps could control mechanical apparatuses simply through the electrical activity generated in localized parts of their brains.
Here in the room where they were meeting, a robotic arm with an intricate and realistic-looking hand rose from a stand in the center of the table.
Byrne dumped a spoonful of light gray powder from an ornate ceramic bowl into his own cup. He swirled it into his drink until it disappeared, coloring the coffee a grayish-brown, then he took a sip.
It was not creamer. It was definitely not sugar.
Thad tried his coffee. As far as he could tell there was nothing unusual about the taste. “The people I represent,” he said, “are very interested in seeing the results you spoke about on the phone.”
“Yes.” Byrne sat facing Thad and the two hulking former Special Forces soldiers turned mercenaries whom he’d brought along with him. They were here to do a little work on Byrne if necessary, if the results weren’t satisfactory or if he proved too unwilling to share the findings. After all, Thad was a man of action and did not take kindly to people wasting his time.
An Indian gentleman in his mid-sixties and wearing a lab coat stood beside Byrne.
Thad took another sip, then set down his cup and gestured with an open hand toward the older man in the lab coat. “I was told we were going to be alone.”
“This is Dr. Malhotra,” Byrne replied. “He’s part of my team.”
Thad nodded politely to the doctor. “I’m pleased to meet you — and I mean no disrespect, but…” He eased his cup to the side, leaned forward, and eyed Byrne coolly. “I was told. We were going. To be meeting. Alone.”
A moment passed. Byrne’s eyes flicked to the two men Thad had brought along. In the end he said nothing about their presence, but simply addressed the man at his side: “Doctor, perhaps you could step into the hallway while I demonstrate our progress to our three guests here.”
“Certainly,” Dr. Malhotra said in a thick accent, but in a tone that was impossible to read. Thad gestured for one of his men to escort the doctor out of the room. While he did, Thad’s other man unbuttoned his jacket, revealing his holstered 9mm Glock 17, and smiled intimidatingly.
Byrne did not appear intimidated.
Once it was just the three of them, Thad folded his hands, laid them on the table, and directed his full attention at Byrne. “Now. I believe you have something to show me, Colonel.” He added that last word to make sure Byrne realized he knew his real identity, that this sophomoric game of using a code name was not going to get him anywhere.
Without a word, Byrne rolled up his left sleeve to reveal a bandage encircling the middle of his forearm. He unwrapped it carefully, exposing a healing incision just over three centimeters long.
“How many were implanted?” Thad asked.
“The array contains one hundred and twelve electrodes.”
“I would’ve thought the incision would be larger.”
“We’ve made great strides lately in reducing the size of the unit.”
Thad shifted his gaze to the robotic arm in the middle of the table. “Show me.”
Byrne depressed a button at the base of the stand that supported the arm. The mechanical hand closed once and then rested in a partially flexed position.
He laid his left arm palm-up on the table and then slowly curled his hand into a fist. As he did, the robotic hand replicated the gesture precisely, down to the minutest flexion of each finger. The colonel twisted his hand and then flattened it and formed a fist again, all gestures that were mirrored exactly by the robotic hand.
“The implant,” he said, “is only four days old, and the body tissue around it is already pulling it into position in my arm, giving us every reason to believe that the permanent implants won’t be rejected by the recipients.”
“Yes, okay,” Thad said somewhat impatiently, “you can remotely control the robotic hand when you move your hand, but that’s not what we were promised; we’ve seen that before. I was told you were—”
“Neural impulses. The nervous system.”
“Yes.”
“Slide your coffee cup closer to the arm.”
Thad did as the colonel requested, and then Byrne took two long, slow breaths, closed his eyes, and remained completely still.
A moment later, the robotic hand slowly opened and rotated counterclockwise. The mechanical arm angled toward the table while Byrne opened his eyes and concentrated, staring intently at the cup.
The arm bent at its artificial elbow and wrist, curled the pointer finger through the cup handle, and depressed the thumb and middle finger in opposition against the handle, just as a human might do when picking up a coffee cup.
The cup was close to the base of the arm, creating an awkward angle, and just like people would naturally do, the robotic arm slid it out slightly to create a less abrupt angle for the wrist and then raised it.
All the while, Byrne did not move his own arm or hand at all. His fingers didn’t even twitch.
Finally, the robotic arm came to rest holding the cup in position as if it were about to lift it to someone’s waiting lips.
Byrne let out a slow breath.
“All that just by your thoughts?” Thad asked quietly.
The colonel nodded. “The electrodes connect to my nerves, and the same impulses that would move my own muscles can be used to—”
“Yes, yes.” Thad was already deep in thought and was not particularly interested in the physiological or neurological specifics — the people he worked for could work through all of that. “How long did it take you to learn to do that? To control it that well?”