The Lightcap (5 page)

“Of course,” Sera replied.  “We will get to that shortly.  I’m actually going to let Adam tell you about Lightcap and how it will be used in your project.  First, I’ll ask you to excuse us while I speak with him briefly in the hall.”  She motioned to Adam, who was trying his best to hide his confusion.  He followed her into the hall, where she spun around and faced him as soon as the door had clicked closed, saying, “Well?  Did you think about it?  I need to know if you’re on board.”

Adam stopped trying to hide his confusion and responded, “I’m here, aren’t I?  You could’ve at least told me that you expected me to sell them on the idea.  I thought I’m just supposed to smile and nod.  I still feel you haven’t told me everything.”

“Of course I haven’t told you everything.  That would require condensing decades of resea—”

“Yeah, I know.  ‘Decades of research by one of the most brilliant minds to ever grace humanity.’  Don’t be so patronizing.  I may not be a neuroscientist or have half the electrical knowhow you have, but I’m no idiot.  I want to know how Lightcap works, or I’m out.”  Adam surprised himself with the force behind his last statement.  His head felt hot.

Velim peered at him intensely, sizing him up.  Adam did his best to appear intimidating, or at least to seem resolved.  He was afraid he just looked as if he had poor posture.  His efforts must have had some effect on her, however, because she sighed and said, “I’ll be happy to provide details later.  For now, all you need to know is that the Lightcap takes a snapshot of neural patterns when initialized.  During the cool down period, Lightcap uses low level laser targeting to, for lack of a better term, zap memories away.”  She gave him an expectant look, as if to ask, “Are you satisfied?”

Adam seethed with anger to the point of having trouble blinking.  A vein pulsed slightly on his forehead.  Trying his best to remain calm and measured, he forced himself to speak slowly as he replied.  “You couldn’t have told me last night that I’m supposed to sell them on a cranial bug zapper?  You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“It’s still extremely complicated.  What I’ve explained to you is the most basic way to describe what Lightcap does.  It’s AI guided, much like the Mind Drive or autocars, and emits an extremely short laser burst, measured in femtoseconds.  Those come from the three modules, bubbles as they’re commonly called, at the end of the device’s arms.  The modules on the Lightcap serve the same function as on the Mind Drive, but also add the ability to target in three dimensions to hit precise areas of the brain and emit extremely low energy laser bursts.  The fourth bubble rests under the occipital ridge, and emits the last burst which intersects with the other three to provide the necessary energy to physically affect the brain.  The AI calculates when to emit the bursts and controls the intersection point.  When the four bursts meet, the memory at that location is gone.  It’s all very safe, very targeted.  Again, decades of research,” she waved her hands in the air while saying this, reminding Adam of his own previous gesture.  “We can discuss it more in the future.  Just trust me.  It’s safe.”

Her blue eyes, solemn and intense, were already locked with his, but when she said this last line they seemed to bore through Adam.  At least he couldn’t doubt her sincerity. 

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll play along, at least for now.  I will need more solid ground at some point.”

“Of course,” Sera said, nodding emphatically, then reached to open the door to 4C.  “It’s a date.”  Adam’s face felt hot again, this time due to blushing instead of anger.

Smiles.  Assurances.  A sales pitch, unrehearsed yet oddly cohesive.  Sera and Adam discussed the Lightcap with some of the most brilliant minds in the programming field, answering questions about how the device was used and its basic function.  Adam found “targeted, focused beam” was a much better sell than “cranial bug zapper”.  He saw Sera take a moment to enter something into her notetab, no doubt a note to the marketing team. 
We’re not only a focus group, we’re guinea pigs,
thought Adam.

Later, he would remember this assessment.

The rest of the day was a blur.  There were mentions of the legal ramifications of tampering with the Lightcap and how they were not to leave the facility.  It really seemed to Adam as if they were trying to drive that point home. 
Never can be too careful,
he thought, sure this emphasis was made at the recommendation of the legal team.  Instructions on Lightcap use were given.  It was compatible with dome profiles to allow for importing personal customizations.  They also discussed topics Adam found puzzling, such as wave dynamics and group movement in flocks of birds and schools of fish.  After an early lunch, they were dismissed early with an admonishment to go to bed one hour before their usual time.

Before the team left room 4C, Doctor Velim informed them the next day would be their first on the project, which also meant day one with Lightcap.  “It will be a long day,” she added, “but at least there won’t be as much paperwork involved.”  She smiled enigmatically at Adam.

That night, Adam had time to check the facial recognition search he had run on Velim the day prior.  Zero one hundred percent results, some partials that came up to eighty percent probability; none were relevant or helpful.  She really was a ghost.  Since he couldn’t find any good dirt on her, he decided to see what traces of Lightcap were on the mesh.

The Metamesh, or mesh, was the natural evolution of the Internet and the plethora of devices that had been developed to access it.  In the old days they used to talk about the cloud, but this was more like an entire ocean, fluid and dynamic.  The massive rows of server farms—still in existence, but much more consolidated and rare—were now mostly replaced by high-speed wireless nodes and flash storage embedded in almost every electronic device sold.  Billions of devices, all interconnected.  This created redundant nodes providing multiple paths from host to host, which allowed for rapid and robust communication, each packet routed through the circuit with the least number of hops, using any available devices along the way. 

Virtually impervious to disaster or sabotage, the mesh quickly became a lawless land, teeming with unsavory characters that could use any number of methods to steal data.  Since it was no longer possible to take down a specific server, as almost all data was mirrored in multiple locations, the data itself became king.  New security methods and ways of thinking had to be developed to keep systems secure.  Encryption experts were in high demand. Entire markets sprung up seemingly overnight.  Adam himself had made his mark, along with Jon, by offering a way to run all known exploits against a specific node with the press of a button.  It was, like many who had risen with rocket-like velocity, a combination of skill and absolute dumb luck, resulting in modest wealth at a young age.  Right place, right time.

During the same period of time, Dej and a group of three others had developed CENTRAL (Central Entrance/Exit Node Traffic Routing Algorithm and Liaison), a new platform for routing mesh packets that required all traffic to be signed by a central authority before being passed to its destination.  Combined with the software Adam and Jon had written, the mesh started to become a much better alternative to the wired internet, especially in areas where high-speed links still hadn’t achieved wide penetration.  Soon, entire blocks of fiber were going dark, the ease of access and increased speeds of the mesh making the idea of wired
anything
obsolete.  The Internet had ruled for decades; now the mesh was king.

Adam used to joke about the mesh being the closest thing to a god he had ever known, but as he got older and gained a more intimate, first-hand understanding of how it worked, the joke didn’t seem quite so funny.  In as many ways as the mesh had at first been a lawless playground, it was now ruled with an iron fist.  Originally, the strong encryption and decentralized nature of packet transmission made it difficult to ban any specific types of content or speech.  After the CENTRAL routing protocol had been implemented throughout most of the mesh, packets had to be routed through a mesh access node.  Many companies began to offer free node access to their employees, the drawback being that all employee mesh traffic was open to snooping, if an employer was so inclined.

To counteract corporate espionage once domes became widespread, lobbyists eventually succeeded in having legislation passed allowing employers to block outside mesh access within their buildings, to require workers to provide their personal passkeys to their employers, and eventually to install monitoring software on every employee dome.

It was also rumored that mesh-enabled devices could be disabled by authorities, either individually or within a geographic area.  Adam had not witnessed this, but there were rumors from many different sources, enough to suggest it was at least possible.

With the way things had become, all mesh searches were logged and decrypted on command if one were suspected of something.  There were ways around this system, but even those could leave oddities in traffic patterns which could arouse an amount of interest that was less than ideal.  Adam knew a few ways to obfuscate his trail but if questioned he could say he was interested in whether or not any information about Lightcap had leaked to the mesh.  A plausible story.  It wouldn’t win him any fans but it wasn’t against any rules he knew of.

His query left running, Adam tossed the notetab onto his end table, stretched his arms above his head, grabbed his wrist and twisted.  Pops and cracks down his spine and arms were among the drawbacks of the constant sitting and staring that came with his profession.  There were ergonomic alternatives, all ridiculous looking and quite expensive, that most people did not trouble with.  Bad posture was almost a badge of honor in his field, as it implied decades of time spent in front of a screen.  This was, of course, taken in turn to suggest wisdom.  Adam wondered at the wisdom of doing that to one’s own body.

Wise or foolish, Adam needed a breath of fresh air.  It was dark and cold, but his building featured an enclosed section to allow for year-round use.  After he found the energy to slide his massive door from right to left along its track, he was out and down the hallway in what felt like seconds.  He felt an urgent need to see the outside world, to prove it was there, or at least that his memory of it was accurate. 

Feeling as if the elevator would never come, Adam bounded up the nineteen floors from his apartment to the roof.  He panted with the effort, and half expected to see a vast nothingness or desolate wasteland as he exploded onto the roof, the door barreling into a swinging arc along its hinges, making an amazing racket.  He was relieved to see the city, half below him and half above, its cut out geometric patterns of order against the few stars he could make out beyond the flashing screens of the floating advertisements platforms, called ad zeps, dotting the night sky.

It wasn’t until he stopped gasping for air, finally recovered after his mad ascent, that he saw her.  His neighbor, Hana Therdon, had been looking over the city.  She turned to face him when he burst through the door, the sound of crashing metal against brick tumbling into darkness.  Wearing a look of wry amusement, Hana slowly shook her head back and forth.  With a slight laugh, she asked, “Do you always make a magnificent entrance, or am I just lucky to witness such a rare event?”

“Oh, you’re lucky all right.  Lucky to witness a moment of my neurosis.  I had a panic attack or something in the stairwell.  Felt as if the outside world wasn’t here, or would be bombed out or on fire.  I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“Because we’re neighbors.  Friends.  We are friends, aren’t we?”  She looked at him pleadingly when she asked this.

Adam and Hana had been neighbors for five years, but their conversations were like those about the weather, except with more biting sarcasm.  Same amount of depth, though.  They dated at one point, several weeks of drinks and conversation that had not progressed beyond a few rounds of casual sex.  Adam felt as if he knew her, but he didn’t view her as a confidante.  “Yeah, we’re friends,” he said, smiling.  “It’s fine.  I just had a bit of a freak-out moment.  Long day at work.”

“Oh that’s right, I remember you practicing for your big day as the boss.  Having a tough time already?  Being in charge not quite what you expected?”  She seemed to sympathize as she consolingly stroked his arm.

“No, it’s not that.  It’s just . . . I . . . I can’t really talk to you about it.  Sorry.  I’m under seven different non-disclosure agreements.  I think I even signed a NDA saying I wouldn’t tell anyone I’d signed a NDA, so I’m sure I’ve already committed an offense worthy of death.  Don’t tell on me,” he said with a look of resignation, his eyebrows raised.

She playfully patted his shoulder and said, “Of course not.  I understand.  I don’t want to get you in trouble.  We can just stay here and look at the City.”

They did just that.  Adam became lost in thought as he watched the lights from the autocars on the street below.  To him, autocars were among the epitomes of the changes that had occurred within his lifetime.  When Adam was a child, his father had taken him to the roof of their building at night to watch the traffic below.  He remembered traffic lights, tricolored patterns commanding the flow of thousands of tons of steel and composite resin, which caused the entire chain of cars to stop and allow for perpendicular movement across the intersection.  Those patterns had been replaced by lanes of dotted points of light, each threaded through the next as in a living thatchwork, passing impossibly close to another, contact never made, with thanks owed to the tech of autocars, domes, and people like Dej who had made them all talk to each other and work cooperatively.