Chapter 11
And it did.
The lens plopped into my eye before I could say another word and hit the surface of my eyeball like something alive. I felt it hum to life as my body heat activated its internal generator. The sensor needles burrowed into my optical nerves and it was like someone had soaked me in water and plugged my eyelashes into a wall socket. I think I screamed, although, in retrospect, that might have been HARV.
“The pain should only last a nano or two,” Randy said soothingly. “You know what they say, no pain, no gain. The suffering of one for the greater good of all. One small step for man and all that. You’ll have to forgive me if this doesn’t help. I failed comforting class in grad school.”
“I can see why,” I said, as the pain started to clear. “But I think I’m okay.”
“Is it working?” Randy asked.
“I’m not sure. How will I … whoa.”
The lines of Randy’s face turned fuzzy around the edges. Then his entire face turned into a blur, like an ice cream portrait stuck in a blender. I turned away to look at the rest of the room only to find that everything had become one gigantic splotch, not just of shape and color but somehow of sound as well. I heard Randy saying something but I had no idea what it was. It sounded like a whale speaking through a mile of murky ocean.
Then I saw the one. That sounds kind of religious on the face of it but, but what I mean is that I saw the number one. It appeared before my eyes in the forefront of the washed-out vision of the world, like something carefully written on a tie-dyed blackboard. Then a zero appeared beside it. Then another couple of ones. Then a zero. And then I lost track because the floodgates had opened and a cascade of ones and zeroes flashed before my eyes almost too quickly to comprehend. Only then did I realize that HARV was coming online in my head.
Slowly, shapes began to form in the flood of ones and zeroes that were cascading before my eyes and I began to see patterns within the torrent. The two white faces of my cognitive world were evolving into one black candlestick. It was as though the perception engine in my head had been switched into overdrive and I found myself recognizing the shapes as letters.
T …
E …
S …
T …
I …
N …
G …
1 …
2 …
3 …
H … I…. B … O…. S … S… …
Then the rest of the world slowly came back into focus. To my surprise, I was laying on my back on the floor of Randy’s lab. Randy was kneeling beside me spouting what first sounded like Esperanto but eventually morphed into English.
“… a little more dramatic than I thought,” he said. “Can you sit up?”
I spoke but I wasn’t sure, at first whether or not it was English (or coherent). Eventually, I put the right sounds together.
“What happened?”
“HARV’s in your head,” Randy said. “It’s going to take a little getting used to.”
“Yeah, thanks for the warning,” I said, slowly rising to my feet. “HARV, are you there?”
Again, letters flashed before my eyes. This time without the binary cascade. It didn’t knock me over this time, but it made me light-headed and I had to grab Randy’s arm to steady myself.
“H … E … R … E … B … O … S … S …”
“Randy, I don’t think this is going to work,” I said.
“Zach, you just plugged the world’s most powerful computer into your cerebral cortex,” Randy said. “It’s going to take you and HARV some time to get used to it.”
“Having him in my head isn’t going to do me a lot of good at ExShell if I keep passing out.”
“You won’t pass out,” Randy said. “HARV will now be able to judge the level of interaction that you can comfortably handle. And he’ll still be with you in the room. He’ll see and hear everything you do and can monitor for danger. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but in a less trauma-inducing way,” I said.
“As I said, it’s going to require some practice to maximize the communication between the two of you,” Randy assured me. “And like any new communication system, there are going to be some kinks to work out. For now, use the traditional interfaces for the majority of the work until you become more adept with this system.” He turned and spoke loudly towards the ceiling. “HARV, can you switch over to Zach’s wrist interface?”
Immediately the computer interface that I wear on my wrist lit up and a beam of light sprang from its tiny lens. HARV’s holographic image, looking none the worse for wear, appeared before Randy and me. I still felt (and faintly heard) HARV in my head but having him use a separate interface made the sensation much more manageable.
“I’m here, Dr. Pool,” HARV said. “How’s the head feel, boss?”
“A little better,” I said. “But it weirds me out knowing that you’re kicking around in there.”
“Yes, well, you can only begin to imagine the joy that being in your head brings to me,” HARV said smugly. “As Dr. Pool says, the internal communication will become more efficient over time. Right now, however, we are due at ExShell in exactly twenty-six minutes. I suggest we get moving.”
I nodded and turned to leave. “Thanks for your help, Randy, I think.”
“We scientists aim to please,” Randy smiled as he walked alongside me.
“One last question,” I said, as we neared the door. “How do I remove the interface?”
Randy hesitated for a nano. “Ah, yes. Well, you see,” he said, “that’s one of those kinks I was telling you about. I haven’t quite figured out how to actually remove it yet.”
“What? You mean you can’t take it off?”
“It’s organically wired to your brain, Zach. It’s not a set of earmuffs.”
“So I’m stuck with it,” I said.
“Well, ‘stuck with it’ is such a pejorative term,” Randy said. “But it’s accurate. For now.”
“Terrific,” I said, and reminded myself that this is why I never trust Randy when he’s overly excited.