Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems
Thu 06/02 13:04:06 PDT

DEBUG INTERFACE INITIALIZED

“There we go,” Father says, snugging the cable from the server rack into my phone and stepping over to where I’m sitting on the operating table. “Let’s walk you through setting up some sensor triggers. Go ahead and turn on your implant’s diagnostic display.”

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The moment I enter the command a full color three-dimensional map of a brain appears in a new window in the center of my field of vision. The model slowly rotates to let me see it from all angles.

“I’m seeing it. Is that my brain? Live?”

“Excellent observation, Noah. Indeed it is. Your implant continuously monitors neural activity, and this is the realtime visualization of that data. Now, we’re going to use this interface to set up a simple sensor and a trigger to go with it. Let’s see how well you remember our talks. Remind me what a sensor trigger does, please.”

“A sensor in the implant monitors the activity of specific groups of neurons. If the sensor is bound to a trigger, the trigger’s function gets activated when the sensor detects the activity. ”

“Excellent. And why might that be important?”

“It’s the easiest way to get a function to run. It’s why my siblings have been waving their hands around when they do things with their clouds. If I put a sensor on the motor cortex regions for each of my fingers flexing, I can get ten different commands to run just by moving my fingers one at a time. If I mix and match combinations of fingers, I can get thousands of different triggers just with those ten sensors. So, anything I can program the bots to do, I can set off with a gesture.”

“Good. You understand the basic theory, now let’s put it into practice. I’m zooming in on your primary motor cortex for you. Let’s set up a simple trigger using your index finger. First, select the menu option to create a group.” I flick with my eyes until I find it, then click it with an eye focus. “Good. Now, flex your finger back and forth in a steady rhythm and watch the colors in the visualization. You should see some sections lighting up in time with your flexing.”

I start moving my finger back and forth. There’s a lot of activity going on all over, even though I’m not trying to move any other parts of my body, but after a few dozen flexes, I see the spot in my curved motor cortex that’s lighting up in time with the motion.

“Found it.”

“Excellent. Go ahead and select it.”

I aim and eyeclick, getting the first cluster of neurons highlighted. The software does the rest, automatic outlining where the brain cells are acting together once I identify it.

“Done.”

“Good.” Father looks at me proudly. It makes me feel a little like a kid who just learned to ride a bike. “Excellent. Now assign it a name, a descriptive one.”

I type in RIGHT-INDEX-FINGER for the sensor’s name and give Father a smile and a nod.

“Congratulations. You just defined your first sensor. Now, bind it to a command. You remember how?”

I open up the binding interface and connect the sensor up to a simple log command that should report that “my finger just moved.” The log command isn’t useful by itself, but it should make it easy to check that the binding is right. I flex the finger to test it out.

my finger just moved.

“It’s working.”

my finger just moved.

my finger just moved.

It fires every time I flex it.

“Good,” Father beams, looking at his screens and checking my work. “Now you probably don’t want to see that log statement every time you move your hand, so go ahead and unbind the sensor from the function.”

It takes me a second to find the control for that in the binding interface, but once I do it’s easy to remove the connection from the sensor to the logging command. The binding disappears from Father’s screen and his smile widens.

“Excellent work! Now, I want you to take some time over the next few weeks to practice with this. Set up sensors to anything that triggers consistent brain activity. Start with the motor neurons until you get comfortable with the process, then branch out however you want to.” He waves his hands emphatically as he explains. I can tell he’s excited about this. “You’ll even be able to hook up sensors to the brain stem so you can trigger functions from involuntary or unconscious actions. Breathing, heartbeat, almost anything.”

“Sounds good. I’m excited to get to work on it.”

“Excellent. I’m going to disconnect the diagnostic gear now so your brain will be all yours again. Just let me know if you have any problems with the implant. Especially watch for any unusual headaches. If you have any issues, let me know right away and we’ll get it sorted out. I don’t expect any problems, since the new implant hardware is extremely safe, but we can’t be too careful.”

I nod and he steps over to his desk and pulls the plug from the phone that’s not a phone.

DEBUG INTERFACE TERMINATED

He steps over and hands it to me. “Take the rest of the day off to get some rest, son. Make sure to keep the phone with you, the range on the connection is just a few feet. When you feel up to it, go ahead and play with your new toy. See what you can come up with. With your natural aptitude, I bet you will surprise us all.”

“I will Father. I promise you that.”

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