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  “If you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for the next round of awakening,” she said.

  “Where were you born?” Dr. Fielding asked Chal, as though he hadn’t heard her.

  “Not here,” Chal said. “Forgive me, I really have to go prepare.” She turned to leave.

  “I’m keeping an eye on you,” Dr. Fielding said.

  Chal turned around, astonished. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” Dr. Fielding said, and now there was a sharp edge to his voice that Chal had never heard before. “Don’t think you can just do anything you like here. I’m watching.”

  Chal tossed her hair back. So that’s what his deal was.

  “Watch all you like, Dr. Fielding,” she said. “It’s possible you might learn something.”

  He scowled, but Chal didn’t wait to hear his reply. She was already through the shelves, swiping her ID at the keypad. As she left, she looked back to see Dr. Fielding standing next to the tanks, his thin eyebrows knitted in anger, the octopi waving their tentacles up toward him as though in supplication.

  ***

  Chal’s second interaction with the prototype was normal, or as normal as possible given the circumstances. She sat back and watched Alan play with his fingers, his hands, his eyes wide and wondering as an infant’s. At one point he made a gesture, and she froze in her chair. After he was re-sedated, she fairly ran out to the observation room.

  “Did you see that?” she said.

  “See what?” Dr. Fielding asked in a cold and clipped tone.

  “His finger. He was dancing it the same way I danced mine during the first awakening.” She was heady with excitement.

  “Wait, what?” one of the technicians said. Dr. Fielding looked as though he wanted to throw the technician through the wall.

  “His finger,” Chal said. Did none of them get it? She wiggled her finger in the air. “Balla amb so dit. He remembered!”

  Dr. Fielding put his hand over his clipboard.

  “Dr. Davidson, we must avoid jumping to conclusions about the prototype. It’s simply too underdeveloped to have that kind of memory retention yet,” he said.

  “But I’m sure–”

  “We’ll be sure to record your observation about what you believe the prototype is doing,” Dr. Fielding said. She wanted to shake him by the shoulders. This was important! He was learning!

  “Let’s prepare the room for a slight increase in stimuli,” Dr. Fielding said. “Up the ambient noise to sixty decibels.”

  “Should we increment the variety of noises?” the technician asked.

  “Not yet,” Dr. Fielding said, looking straight at Chal. She was staring daggers at him. “We must be patient.”

  Chal turned on one heel and left the observation room. Evan and another assistant had taken the prototype out of the tank and were wheeling him out of the room on the hospital gurney. She ran to catch up with them.

  “Mind if I tag along?” Chal asked.

  “Sure thing,” he said. “He’s already under full sedation.” They pushed the gurney along the hallway. It was too narrow for Chal to walk alongside, so she lagged behind, looking at the prototype from where she could glimpse him around the shoulder of the other assistant. He looked just like he was sleeping, peaceful almost.

  They came to the holding room and the assistants picked up the prototype carefully, transferring him to what looked to be a normal hospital-style bed. They inserted the necessary IVs and Evan checked for sores, bruises, or soiling. The monitors along the wall beeped and whirred, performing the necessary task of constant observation.

  Before they left, Evan came around the bed. To Chal’s surprise, he pulled out handcuffs from under the bedsheet. One end was clasped around the bedpost. The other he slid around the prototype’s arm and cuffed shut. He then proceeded to do the same for his other arm, and then his legs.

  “Why are you doing that?” Chal said.

  “Huh?” he asked.

  “Why are you handcuffing him to the bed? He’s sedated.”

  Evan shrugged. “Protocol. It’s Dr. Fielding’s order.”

  Chal nodded, but inside she was seething. She felt that it was ridiculous – unduly paranoid, to be sure – to handcuff a child to a hospital bed. For that was what Alan was – a child. One that looked like a man, to be sure, but still a child inside. His neuronal connections had taken a steep jump in the second experiment, and they had read sharp spikes of alpha waves in alternation with longer theta states, which most likely meant that he was learning, or at least thinking about his experiences.

  “It’s crazy to think of what’s going on in his brain right now,” Chal said. “Were you involved with the programming?”

  “A bit,” Evan said. “I worked mostly on capability programming.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Setting up neuronal structures to be activated later. Stuff like how to drive, how to use a fork, little things.”

  “Using backwards induction?”

  “Yeah,” Evan said. “I actually worked with the guy whose DNA we’re using for all this. So that there wouldn’t be any problems interfacing brain and body.”

  “But you can’t just preprogram stuff like knowing how to drive.” Chal frowned. Her rats had still needed to learn the mazes. There was no way to put that knowledge into their brains beforehand.

  “No, but the structures are set up to make learning easier.” Evan was starting to get excited, and she could tell that this was the kind of research that he was best at. Some scientists liked the code, and some liked the lab work. It seemed like Evan was one of the former.

  “If the brain has to build out all those structures, it takes forever,” Evan said. “We code it so that the myelin networks for different tasks are all already built up by the time the brain is ready to be developed. That way, just like that–” and he snapped his fingers “–the brain is ready to go.”

  “So it grows into the existing structure.”

  “And it should be damn quick,” Evan said. “What you’ve seen so far... well, it’s much better than what we’ve done before, but I want to see what comes next. He’s going to be a superlearner.”

  “Can I see the program notes?” Chal asked. “I’d like to know exactly what kinds of structures he has preprogrammed.”

  “Sure,” Evan said. “Dr. Fielding should have all of the code on his workstation.”

  “You don’t have a copy I could look at?”

  “They classified everything as soon as I was done with it. How dumb is that, right? I made the damn program and I’m not even qualified to see it without permission.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Pretty dumb,” Chal murmured. She was distracted, thinking about the possibilities of preprogramming brain structures. Using an actual person to do backwards induction was a brilliant idea, and she wished she had thought of it for her rats.

  “Ok, I’m off to run the blood samples. See you later,” Evan said.

  “See you.”

  She sat down by the bed and looked at the prototype. They had put a sheet over his body to warm him, but one corner had fallen down. She pulled it up to his shoulder and tucked it behind. Touching him, she was surprised at how warm his body felt.

  He was just sleeping, just a man sleeping.

  She sank down beside him and watched him breathe. His muscled, perfect chest rose and fell in time with the low beep coming from the monitor behind him. Reaching out, she brushed the dark hair away from his forehead. He shifted, and her hand retracted instinctively, as though being stung. She had an irrational fear that she would wake him at the wrong time. But of course that was impossible.

  He looked just like a man, she thought. They had created him from scratch, of course, so there were no seams or stitches. He wasn’t one of Frankenstein’s monsters. She still had the nagging suspicion that she could pull back his ear, or look into the crook of his elbow, and she would see a computer chip poking out from underneath the whole thing. There must be something th
at showed, something that could tell the difference between the simulation of a man and a man.

  What was the difference between a simulation and the real thing, anyway, once the simulation was realistic enough?

  Chal rested her head in one hand, her gaze sweeping over Alan. She felt so tired. There was something in her driving her toward a purpose, and she had always let that drive carry her along, from project to project. Every once in a while, though, she would sit down and just feel tired. It was as if all of the exhaustion that she had been outrunning had caught up to her and tackled her to the ground.

  Perhaps it was just the adrenaline seeping away after her second encounter with Alan. She had wanted to reach out, wanted to talk with him so badly after the session had started. He was sitting only a few feet away, splashing lightly in the water. She knew that the experiment’s success depended on her, though, so she had sat on her hands and observed, observed, observed.

  She knew he remembered her singing to him. Hadn’t he danced his finger around just like she had showed him to? It wasn’t just her imagination. She would have to rewatch both tapes, just to be sure, whenever she had time. Eventually, eventually...

  She did not remember falling asleep next to the bed, and when she awoke, her neck hurting from the position she was in, she rubbed her eyes and sat up with embarrassment. Alan lay on the bed, his chest rising and falling slowly. The monitors beeped on and on.

  She heard steps out in the hallway and turned her head, but there was nobody there. She went to the door and swiped her ID, looking quickly out into the hallway. Nothing.

  Chal turned to Alan. Someone had been watching them. It gave her the chills. She made sure that he was covered completely by the blanket, tucking the sheets in around the handcuffs on his wrists and legs, before she left to go find something to eat.

  ***

  CHAPTER NINE

  Johnner was already in the kitchen, bent over a sandwich. Chal’s stomach growled at the sight of it, and she asked the cook to make her one as well. She sat down across the table from Johnner.

  “You were right,” Johnner said. “About the finger. I think he’s developing memory.” Chal was surprised. She had expected him to side with Dr. Fielding, and was pleasantly encouraged by his backing her.

  “That kind of development is a lot quicker than normal, isn’t it?” Chal said.

  “What’s normal?” Johnner said. He threw his hands in the air. “The only data we have are questionable results from animal-substrate experiments.”

  “Still,” Chal said. “Most of the animal-life substrates I’ve worked with have taken weeks, sometimes months to develop mimicry behavior and mid-term memory retention. And he seems to be developing emotion as well.”

  “Apart from fear?” Johnner was disbelieving, and Chal thought that perhaps she had gone too far.

  “He seemed happy at times during the second experiment,” she said, hedging. “And he’s certainly curious.”

  “The curiosity I can do without,” Johnner said. “I only wish we could move onto language soon. We need to know for sure if he’s able to feel emotions.”

  “Are you more of a linguist, then?” Chal asked. It was nice to be able to talk with someone else who seemed to know what was going on, even though she felt an invisible barrier between her and Johnner. He only let on so much, and she wished she knew what he was thinking.

  “More or less. I’d like for him to be able to understand verbal commands and respond in kind,” Johnner said.

  “So that we can understand what he’s feeling.”

  “Yes, to know that he’s feeling.”

  “We need to develop his other senses first,” Chal said. “I’ve had most success beginning with basic things like touch, then moving onto activities that require higher levels of consciousness.”

  “Then we should start with touch.”

  “He’s already touched my hand once,” Chal said. “And that was while listening to a song. I’m impressed that it didn’t overstimulate him.”

  “We should start working on other senses as soon as we can.”

  Chal took another bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.

  “You seem impatient,” she said, watching him gulp water to wash down his food.

  “I’m a military man under a military deadline,” he said. “That’s all it is.”

  “What deadline are we working under?”

  “That’s classified information,” he said. “But I’ve been asked to hurry this project along.”

  “Tell them you need more time,” she said.

  “They’ve given me more time. They need results,” he said.

  “You can’t push a growing person too quickly,” Chal said. “It could kill him.”

  Johnner coughed. “We’ll be starting the next awakening at 1600 hours.” He stood up. “If you can begin to talk with him, that would be fine.” He didn’t say a word about what would happen if Chal didn’t, and she realized that it was an order.

  “I’ll do what I can,” she said carefully.

  “Good, good,” Johnner said. She could tell his mind was already elsewhere, but she had one more question.

  “Another thing. I’d like to contact my agent and get to check my email. Is there any way I can do that?” With all of the hubbub and commotion around the experiments, Chal hadn’t had time to sleep properly or shower, let alone find a way to access the internet. Now she wondered if she was even going to be allowed contact with the outside world. She hadn’t so much as seen a phone anywhere around the labs. Despite herself, she almost wished for the answer to be no. It had been nice to be isolated from the pressures of the world.

  “Yes, of course. I’ll send over a computer for you to use as soon as possible,” Johnner said.

  “Thank you,” Chal said. So much for that. She was sure there was lots of news to get back to at home – grants to approve, project results to pore over. But the project she was working on right now was so incredible, so absolutely insanely important, that all other things seemed to pale in comparison. She was so distracted that she did not notice the look of suspicion on Johnner’s face as he turned away from her.

  ***

  Dr. Fielding handed her the clipboard.

  “I’ve attached the standard questions,” he said. “Isn’t it quick to begin developing his language network?”

  “Lieutenant Johnner wants to see his language develop as quickly as possible,” Chal said, by means of explanation. What she didn’t explain was that she was very, very excited about being able to talk to Alan again, and possibly get him to respond. His language network had already been grown and programmed with vocabulary, and all that was left was for him to connect language to the world around him.

  All that was left. Ha! It certainly was a slow process in children, taking years and years. But Alan’s mind was different, developed in many ways to be an adult human’s, and she wondered how fast he would progress once they had begun speaking.

  They started by letting him play in the tank for a minute or two upon waking. Every time he woke up, he had to be reminded of his physical form, to get acquainted with the notion that he had a body. Chal was fascinated by the process.

  Most people thought that they were their bodies, to some degree or another. Even though many scientists claimed that they didn’t identify solely with their physical form, even though something like cutting off a hand or a foot didn’t seem like cutting off part of your consciousness, there was still a part of them that believed their body was different somehow. That the bag of muscle and fat hanging off of their bones was different from the wood that made up their kitchen table.

  It was hard, but sometimes Chal was able to concentrate enough on her body so that it didn’t seem a part of her anymore. There were pores in her skin, letting in air and water. There was her mouth and digestive system, which took in pieces of the world and excreted out the transformed material. Every cell in her body had died and been replaced a hundred times. Sometime
s she could feel this ebb and flow down to the very core of her being, and she felt herself to be nothing more than a pinprick of consciousness in the universe, her body’s particles interwoven with every other particle in the world.

  She never talked with anybody about this, in part because she thought they might call her crazy or worse, obvious. Her philosophical background had afforded her the tools for understanding the key debates in metaphysics, but there was a difference between understanding and knowing.

  Her reverie was broken by the timer’s red light flashing on her clipboard, to indicate that she should begin talking. Hesitant, she leaned forward and allowed Alan to see her more fully. She waited until his eyes focused on her before speaking.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.” He seemed surprised by the words coming out of his mouth. His lips moved timidly, forming the words piece by piece, but the programmed linguistics structure was intact. She put down her clipboard.

  “I am Chal,” she said.

  “You are Chal,”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I’m Chal.” Let’s see how he did with a contraction. She paused, letting his brain adjust. So many neurons firing, all at once. Memory centers, linguistic parsing, phonetic synthesis. All of the pieces working together to form a single sentence. It amazed her every time she thought about it.

  “I am–” he said, and stopped.

  “You are Alan.” His eyes turned to her, then down to his body, and he smiled.

  “I am Alan.” He moved his fingers through the water, making ripples that grew until they reached the sides of the tank, then rippled back.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “What is Alan?” he asked absently.

  “Alan is a name for you. You are a person.”

  “I am a person. Alan is my name.” He touched his face with both hands, then moved his fingers down to his neck, his shoulders, his arms, touching everything. He looked down at his body, then back up at her.

  “You are Chal.” He sat up in the tank quickly and leaned over, taking her head in his hands. His fingers pressed against her temples, wet with salt water. They felt warm. Chal’s eyes widened, but she tried not to appear too frightened. It was okay, she told herself. He was only learning. His naked body was dripping onto the floor, but his head was cocked, his eyes fastened to her face.