Part 16 (1/2)

She shrugged. ”They gave it me.”

”Very generous.”

”I was in konn trials. They are kind to some of us.”

Kind if you are a prize subject, I imagined. ”I heard that you were very accomplished.”

”The SanJi man. He talks a lot.”

”He was very complimentary.”

”He wants konn. Does not know how to get it.”

”There are few who can do it well,” I said to be saying something and not knowing where to go with this.

”I am one such.”

”So I hear.”

”And I choose my communion.”

I had not heard that term used about konn but the religious element made sense. ”I suppose that's what we all want, madam. Deep connection.”

”It is not for s.e.x.”

”I suppose not.”

”You say you are doing neurological net research and yet have not experienced this?”

I shrugged, unsure what to say. Embarra.s.sed, too.

”I will think on it.” She got up and walked away without another word. The fox glanced at me uncertainly and then hurried to catch up. When she turned to see if I was watching I quickly looked away.

On a slow day, we process about twelve thousand thoughts. Thinking fast and hard, that number can climb to fifty or sixty thousand. But then most minds need to rest.

Many labs in Biopolis study the intricate neural webs that make all this happen. I had built a simulation of human memory that attracted considerable interest but I felt I didn't understand memory well. No one did. My model was a pleasant toy but it could not approach the basic problem.

”Don't think about it too much,” SanJi said to me as he sipped a Singapore sling in a downtown bar. Warm breezes wafted by, scented with honey. ”Let your intuition work on it.”

I was sticking to tea for now. ”I can simulate neural sorting methods and match them with lab experiments, fine. But that's just the conscious work. Our brains send us about eleven million bits of data a second, while we can consciously deal with maybe fifty a second. We're aware of maybe five percent of what we're thinking about, tops.”

”Sure, the other ninety-five percent gets worked over out of view. We run on a stripped-down simple model of what's really happening.”

”Which means a real human-level artificial mind is impossible.”

SanJi shook his head. ”Maybe not. We can run a model of the unconscious in background, though. We're the sum of conscious and mostly unconscious processes. The only direct way into the unconscious is a konn. They're rare. We don't even know why, but they are.”

SanJi worked in the rather vague area of konn technology and he talked about it for a while as I tried to follow. It was not my field and like many tech types SanJi would lapse into jargon or details when what I wanted to know was the basic mechanism. I finally said, ”Dreams, isn't it?”

”We don't really know much, but in a way, yes. That's why n.o.body can konn except when both are asleep.”

”Amazing it took us so long to think of studying people linked while sleeping.”

”But what you see on konn isn't dreams. It's the other unconscious mind at work. There's a sensation of past events called up and reviewed, usually with images. Bland stuff, really. Most is just people talking to the subject-you're always in the viewpoint of your konn partner, of course.”

”Nothing juicy?”

”Oh, s.e.x? Some of that. But realize how much of your day is about having s.e.x.” He laughed and ordered another sling, eyeing the waitress in her sarong. ”I don't mean thinking about it-that's a lot, right? There's plenty more of that than the real thing. Turns out, when you're asleep there's even more.”

This wasn't really a revelation but I wanted to find out about the lady with the fox so I listened to him go on about theory. Imagination is fine but experience is better, my thesis professor had said. ”So how do you know this?” I cut in.

”I am about to make a konn. My own.” He said this almost sheepishly.

”Oh really? With Aliim?”

He jerked and nearly spilled his drink on his crisp white pants. ”You ... know her.”

”Not as well as you do, apparently.”

”She is said to be the best.”

”I admire your ability to make a konn with her.”

”I have grant support.”

”Even better. You do not need to use other things.”

He looked at me sharply. ”What other things?”

”There are many temptations in the world.”

”What do you mean?”

I was getting tired of this but said, ”She must live somehow. And it is not as if there is s.e.x involved.”

”Of course not.”

”Then it is perfectly fine,” I said with a smile. ”An experiment.”

I spent some time then with a woman field biologist who was quite entrancing, and so for a week or two forgot about the lady and how SanJi wanted to know her so much. I did recall from earlier talks that SanJi could not really konn with his wife.

SanJi had tried to demonstrate his love for his wife in the usual way men did. Then he got the idea that with a link and konn it would be even greater. He talked about it with some of us. The zest of the new and the strange had come into him.

When it failed a kind of light went out in him, I could see. He did not speak of it but I could see when it was there no more.

That was when the technology was new and everybody thought it would sweep the world. As it turned out there were many mismatches in the neural patterns, which meant most of the time you got nothing from going into the chamber and falling asleep while linked to another on the konn tech. There was a brain-derived neurotrophic factor that stopped the melding going forward. Most often you just got a headache.