A Brain (30 page)

Michaels spun around. “Mr. Sansone. I'm aware that the CIA is not your jurisdiction. I need some more time with Dr. Philips.”

Turning back to Philips he said, “Martin, I want to show you something. Come on.” He took a step toward the door connecting to the neighboring amphitheater.

Martin was paralyzed. His hands were gripping the brass railing that fringed the pit. Relief had become perplexity, and with the perplexity had come the deep rumbling of renewed fear.

“What is going on here?” he asked with a sense of dread. He spoke slowly, enunciating each word.

“That's what I want to show you,” Michaels said. “Come on!”

“Where's Denise?” Philips didn't move a muscle.

“She's perfectly safe. Believe me. Come on.” Michaels stepped back over to Philips and grabbed his wrist to encourage him to step down into the pit. “Let me show you some things. Relax. You'll see Denise in a few minutes.”

Philips allowed himself to be led past Sansone and into the next amphitheater. The young student had gone in before them and switched on the light. Martin saw another amphitheater, whose seats had been removed. In the pit where he was standing was a huge screen made of millions of light-sensitive photoreceptor cells whose wires fed into a processing unit. From this first processor emerged a significantly smaller number of wires, which were gathered into two trunks that led into two computers. Wires from
these computers led into other computers, which were cross-connected. The setup filled the room.

“Do you have any idea what you're looking at?” asked Michaels.

Martin shook his head.

“You're looking at the first computerized model of the human visual system. It's large, primitive by our current standards, but surprisingly functional. The images are flashed on the screen and the computers you see here associate the information.” Michaels made a sweeping gesture with his hands. “What you are looking at, Martin, is akin to that first atomic pile they built at Princeton. This will be one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in history.”

Martin looked at Michaels. Maybe the man was crazy.

“We have created the fourth-generation computer!” said Michaels, and he slapped Philips on the back. “Listen. The first generation was merely the first computers that were not just calculators. The second generation came in with transistors. The third generation was microchips. We have given birth to the fourth generation, and that little processor you have in your office is one of our first applications. You know what we've done?”

Philips shook his head. Michaels was on fire with excitement.

“We've created true artificial intelligence! We've made computers that think. They learn and they reason. It had to come, and we did it!” Michaels grabbed Martin's arm and pulled him into the hall connecting the two old amphitheaters. There between the two-tiered lecture rooms was the door that led into the old Microbiology and Physiology labs. When Michaels opened it, Martin saw the inside had been reinforced
with steel. Behind it was a second door. It too was reinforced and secured. Michaels unlocked it with a special key and pulled it open. It was like stepping into a vault.

Martin staggered under the impact of what he saw. The old labs with their small rooms and slate-top experiment tables had been removed. Instead Philips found himself in a hundred-foot-long room with no windows. Down the center was a row of huge glass cylinders filled with clear liquid.

“This is our most valuable and productive preparation,” said Michaels, patting the side of the first cylinder. “Now I know your first impression will be emotional. It was for all of us. But believe me, the rewards are worth the sacrifice.”

Martin slowly began to walk around the container. It was at least six feet high and three feet in diameter. Inside, submerged in what Martin later learned was cerebrospinal fluid, were the living remains of Katherine Collins. She floated in a sitting position with her arms suspended over her head. A respiration unit was functioning, indicating that she was alive. But her brain had been completely exposed. There was no skull. Most of the face was gone except for the eyes, which had been dissected free and covered with contact lenses. An endotracheal tube issued from her neck.

Her arms had also been carefully dissected to extract the ends of the sensory nerves. These nerve endings looped back like strands of a spider web to connect with electrodes buried within the brain.

Philips made a slow complete circle around the cylinder. An awful weakness spread over him and his legs threatened to give way.

“You probably know,” said Michaels, “that
significant advances in computer science, like feedback, came from studying biological systems. It's really what cybernetics is all about. Well, we've taken the natural step and gone to the human brain itself, not studying it like psychology, which thinks of it as a mysterious black box.” Suddenly, Philips remembered Michaels using the enigmatic term on the day he presented Martin with the computer program. Now he understood. “We've studied it like any other vastly complicated machine. And we've succeeded, beyond our dreams. We've discovered how the brain stores its information, how it accomplishes parallel processing of information rather than the inefficient serial processing of yesterday's computers, and how the brain is organized in a functionally hierarchial system. Best of all, we've learned how to design and build a mechanical system that mirrors the brain and has these same functions. And it works, Martin! It works beyond your wildest imagination!”

Michaels had nudged Philips to continue down the row of cylinders, looking in at the exposed brains of the young women, all at different levels of vivisection. At the last cylinder Philips paused. The subject was in the earliest state of preparation. Philips recognized the remains of the face. It was Kristin Lindquist.

“Now, listen,” said Michaels. “I know it's shocking when you first see it. But this scientific breakthrough is so big that it is inconceivable to contemplate the immediate benefits. In medicine alone, it will revolutionize every field. You've already seen what our very preliminary program will do with a skull X ray. Philips, I don't want you to make any snap decisions, you understand?”

They'd finished the trip around the room, which was a marriage between a hospital and a computer
installation. In the corner was what appeared to be a complicated lifesupport setup, like an intensive-care unit. Sitting in front of the monitors was a man in a long white coat. Michaels' and Philips' arrival had not disturbed his concentration.

Standing again in front of Katherine Collins, Philips found words for the first time: “What is going into this subject's brain?” His voice was flat, unemotional.

“Those are sensory nerves,” said Michaels eagerly. “Since the brain is ironically insensitive to its own state, we've joined Katherine's peripheral sensory nerves up to electrodes so that she can tell us which sections of her brain are functioning at any given moment. We've constructed a feedback system for the brain.”

“You mean this preparation communicates with you?” Philips was genuinely surprised.

“Of course. That's the beauty of this whole setup. We've used the human brain to study itself. I'll show you.”

Outside of Katherine Collins' cylinder but in line with her eyes was a unit that resembled a computer terminal. It had a large upright screen and a keyboard, which was electrically attached to a unit within the cylinder as well as to a central computer on the side of the room. Michaels keyed a question into the unit and it flashed onto the screen. How are you feeling, Katherine?

The question vanished and in its place came: Fine, I'm eager to start work. Please stimulate me.

Michaels smiled and looked at Martin. “This girl can't get enough. That's why she's been so good.”

“What did she mean, ‘stimulate me'?”

“We planted an electrode in her pleasure center. That's how we reward her and encourage her to
cooperate. When we stimulate her she has the sensation of one hundred orgasms. It must be sensational because she wants it constantly.”

Michaels typed into the unit: “Only once, Katherine. You must be patient.” Then he pushed a red button on the side of the keyboard. Philips could see Katherine's body arch slightly and shudder.

“You know,” said Michaels, “it's been shown now that the reward system of the brain is the most powerful motivating force, even greater than self-preservation. We've even found a way to incorporate that principle in our newest processor. It makes the machines function more efficiently.”

“Who ever conceived of all this?” asked Philips not sure he believed everything he was seeing.

“No one person can take credit or blame,” said Michaels. “It all happened in stages. One thing led to another. But the two people most responsible are you and I.”

“Me,” said Martin. He looked like he'd been slapped.

“Yes,” said Michaels. “You know I've always been interested in artificial intelligence; that's why I was interested in working with you initially. The problems you presented about reading X rays crystallized the whole central issue called ‘pattern recognition.' Humans could recognize patterns, but the most sophisticated computers had inordinate difficulty. By your careful analysis of the methodology you used to evaluate X rays, you and I isolated the logical steps that had to be solved electronically if we were to duplicate your function. It sounds complicated, but it isn't. We needed to know certain things about how a human brain recognizes familiar objects. I teamed up with some physiologists interested in neuroscience
and we initiated a very modest study using radioactive deoxy-glucose, which could be injected into patients who were then subjected to a specific pattern. We used the E charts frequently used by Ophthalmology. The radioactive glucose analog then made microscopic lesions in the subjects' brains by killing the cells that had been involved in recognizing and associating the E pattern. Then it was just a matter of mapping those lesions to determine how the brain functioned. The technique of selective destruction had been used for research on animal brains for years. The difference was that, using it on humans, we learned so much so quickly that it spurred us on to greater efforts.”

“Why young women?” asked Martin. The nightmare was becoming a reality.

“Purely because of ease. We needed a population of healthy subjects who we could call back whenever we needed them. The Gynecology population suited our purpose. They ask very little about what's being done to them, and by merely altering the Pap smear report, we could get them to return as often as necessary. My wife has been in charge of the university's GYN clinic for years. She selected the patients and then injected the radioactive material in their bloodstream when she drew blood for their routine laboratory work. It was very easy.” Martin had a sudden vision of the severe, black-haired woman in the GYN clinic. He had trouble associating her with Michaels, but then he realized that was far more believable than everything else he'd seen.

The screen in front of Katherine Collins came alive again: Stimulate me, please.

Michaels typed into the keyboard: “You know the rules. Later, when the experiments begin.”

Turning to Martin, he said: “The program was so easy and so successful that it encouraged us to expand the goals of the research. But this happened gradually, over several years. We were encouraged to give huge doses of radiation to delineate the final associative areas of the brain. Unfortunately this caused some symptomology in a few of the patients, especially when we began work on the temporal lobe connections. This part of the work became very tricky because we had to balance the destruction we were causing with the level of tolerable symptoms for the subjects. If the subject got too many symptoms we had to bring them in, which initiated this stage of the research.” Michaels gestured toward the row of glass cylinders. “And it's been here in this room that all the major discoveries have been made. But of course we never envisioned this when we started.”

“What about these recent patients, like Marino and Lucas and Lindquist?”

“Ah, yes. They did cause a bit of a stir. They were the patients receiving the highest dose of radioactivity, and their symptoms came on so fast that some of them went to physicians before we could get to them. But the physicians never came close to a diagnosis, especially Mannerheim.”

“You mean he's not involved?” asked Martin with surprise.

“Mannerheim? Are you joking? You can't have egotistical bastards like that involved in a project of this magnitude. He'd want credit for every little breakthrough.”

Philips looked around the room. He was horrified and overwhelmed. It didn't seem possible that it could happen, especially right smack in the center of a university's medical center. “The thing that amazes
me most,” said Martin, “is that you could get away with this. I mean some poor bastard up in pharmacology mistreats a rat and the animal league is on his back.”

“We've had a lot of help. You might have noticed those men out there are FBI agents.”

Philips looked at Michaels. “You don't have to remind me of that. They tried to kill me.”

“I'm sorry about that. I had no idea what was going on until you called me. You've been under surveillance for over a year. But they told me it was for your protection.”