Jared was half dozing at his desk, listening to relaxing ocean sounds on his phone, when a small alarm beeped and flashed on his computer screen, then another. He clicked on one and leaned forward to see the details.
The alert gave a time hack and said, “Cloud processing usage at 90% of maximum value.” This was followed by a list of running program instances, all of which showed high usage.
Jared clicked on the other alarm. It was similar but said that memory was at 90%.
He looked at Frank, heavyset and casually dressed, sitting at a desk over to his right, watching music videos with headphones on. No one else was in the office and the other three desks sat vacant and dark. Jared knew that Frank wouldn’t hear him, so he threw a stress ball at Frank. It didn’t hit Frank but came close enough to get his attention. He pulled back the headphones, “What the heck?”
“Frank, are you seeing these alarms?”
After a few seconds, it was clear from Frank’s expression that he hadn’t seen them. He clicked around on his screen. He gave a loud, “Hmm. I’ll check on it. You check to see if the front-end equipment looks okay.”
Jared reviewed several log files and various settings related to the front-end measurement sensors. Everything appeared to be functioning, but data flow was much higher than expected.
By the time he’d checked that, Frank said, “Yeah, our data flow is through the roof. It’s gonna top out in a couple minutes if it keeps up.”
Jared thought for a minute. There wasn’t much they could do. The program manager, Thad Jones, had set those alarm values to control expenses for cloud processing. Admins like Jared and Frank weren’t supposed to change them on their own, but the doc was still with a patient. He’d be pissed if things crashed.
Jared stood up. “I’m gonna tell Thad.”
He went through the door on the left and down a couple offices to where Thad sat. He was older and more mature than the admins, being in his thirties, and a lot fancier, wearing dress shirts instead of their polos and tee shirts. He had headphones on and might be in a call, but Jared figured this was important enough to risk it. He knocked on the door frame and stuck his head in.
Thad, too, pulled off his headsets. “What’s up?”
Jared said, “Processing and memory are both alerting. We’re going to bust limits any minute. Everything else looks fine. What should we do.”
Thad got quickly up and pointed out the door. “Show me.”
When they got back out to the admin area, Jared pointed at his screen and then motioned toward the room to the right where Doctor Lvov was in with a test subject. “Data flow from the sensors in there is five times higher than what you told us to expect. It’s pumping up to the cloud and both processing and memory at maximum.”
Thad looked toward Frank with his brow furrowed in a questioning look.
Frank shrugged and said in a casual tone, “I’m seeing the same. We’re gonna bust soon if the flow doesn’t slow.” He then chuckled to himself at his unintentional rhyming.
Thad leaned in to look hard at Jared’s screens and saw what the two admins had been explaining. He grabbed Jared’s mouse and clicked a few more things, getting similar answers.
Jared said, “What should we do? Do we just ride it out or up the limits?”
Thad pursed his lips and took off his glasses, deep in thought. After a minute he said, “Up the limits. The doc will kill us if this breaks.”
Frank put his arms in a questioning gesture, “What should we up them to?”
Thad thought again. The limits were set to ensure their bill for cloud use didn’t go crazy, but there was leeway, and the project was at a critical stage. “Go triple.”
Frank’s eyebrow showed up but he started typing. As he did so, he looked back at Thad. “What do we do if it hits the limits again?”
“Triple again.”
Jared always liked to ensure they didn’t get in trouble. He said, “Can you shoot us an e-mail on that?”
Thad snorted, but nodded and left the room. “Yeah. Make sure all the data is getting captured and be ready to review when the Doc’s done in an hour or so.”
Frank and Jared reset the limits and just watched as the processes burned through most of that. By the time they were done, usage was over eight times the original limits, and those had originally been considered very generous limits. They couldn’t see what it was, but something strange had happened with the new sensors they’d installed. Doctor Lvov finished up with his patient, a scruffy guy in his twenties, and sent him on his way.
The team gathered in the small, cramped conference room about an hour later. Doctor Lvov was there, anxious to look at the data. He was a short, dark-haired man of about sixty wearing slacks, a tee shirt, and a suit coat in what Jared thought was an attempt to look like Steve Jobs or something. His assistant Kate was there as well. She was a skinny but attractive blonde in her thirties. Jared and Kate had met up ahead of time to get the data loaded so it was ready to pull up on the screen. Frank was there just in case any questions came up, while Thad traditionally facilitated the meeting.
Thad started, looking to Lvov, “Doc, as you’ve likely heard, something unexpected happened during your session today—”
Lvov interrupted, anxious to get on with seeing results. He motioned vaguely, dismissing the issue. “Yes, I heard there was a bit more data than expected.”
Thad’s voice rose a bit, apparently frustrated that Lvov wasn’t acknowledging the potential cost and significance. He said, “Doc, there was more than eight times as much as expected. There is a very real cost. The project budget is at risk.”
Jared interrupted hesitantly. He didn’t usually have a lot to say in these meetings, but he needed to clarify something. “Sir, the data usage was eight times over the maximum. It was fifteen times over the expected.”
Thad nodded, “Yes, even more so.”
Lvov looked unimpressed as if he were waiting for the part that mattered to him.
Kate answered for Lvov’s team. “We did install the new neural sensors. We knew there would be more data.”
Frank got frustrated at the vague dismissal. “Yes, but you said it might almost double things. What happened?”
She cleared her throat and went on. “We’re still studying that. Our best initial supposition is that the sensors didn’t just analyze millions of nodes, but rather pursued the connections to those nodes.”
Frank interrupted. “Like it went recursive or something?”
She shrugged and smiled weakly. “Maybe. We’re not sure yet.”
Thad gave Kate a faint smile, glad to be getting something potentially useful. He turned his attention back to Lvov. “If we can’t predict or control the data and processing, we’re either going to have to severely limit the length of your sessions, or you’re going to have to find a great deal more funding.”
Lvov said nothing, but his stern face registered rebuke. Finally, he said, “I see” as an acknowledgement of the issue. Then, after a long pause, he switched gears completely, pointing to the large screens. “So, let’s see what we got with all that data.”
Thad sat, grumbling to himself about some people ‘just not getting it.’
Kate got up and stepped near the screen to point out key things in the data. The screen is filled with a three dimensional, grayish-white representation of a portion of a brain. Along the edges of the image blue hexagons showed the placement of the neural sensor clusters. A text bar at the bottom of the screen showed a running transcript of Lvov’s discussion with the test subject.
She said, “This is at ten times speed as you begin the session.”
As the video progressed, there were undulations in the image of the brain and blue lines snaked out from the sensor clusters to various spots on the brain like tendrils or roots. These increased in number and spread as things progressed but then withered away and regrew in other areas.
She went on, “Here, you can see the sensors accessing various neuron clusters as the patient discusses specific memories. You can see the discussion in the text box.”
Lvov looked at Thad and the others as if they lacked understanding. “What I’m doing at this point is drawing the patient’s attention to certain types of memories. As we go on, I have them focus more and more on specific, strong memories.”
Shortly after he said this, the tendrils shifted again and then got ever deeper, covering huge swaths of the brain image blue.
Lvov said without a hint of emotion, “Ah, yes. Here he was talking about being badly beaten in high school.”
Then something happened. The brain and tendril image largely faded into the background and what looked like a black-and-white video appeared inside a cloudy region over the brain. It was a bit distorted and jerky, as if the frequency or modulation weren’t quite right, and some areas of the image were missing.
Lvov stood up, staring in shock and dismay. He said curtly, “Slow it down! Real time.”
Kate quickly did so, and it became a bit easier to make out portions of the video.
All jaws in the room dropped and everyone stared in stunned disbelief. There could be no doubt that they were somehow ‘seeing’ a video of the patient being beaten. This went on for several disturbing minutes with some kind of grainy sound flaring up at points. The young man had clearly been in great pain, while the three boys that beat him seemed sickeningly elated.
Finally, Thad stood in anger, looking accusingly at Frank and Jared. “What the Hell is this? Is this some kind of sick joke? If it is, it’s in the worst possible taste.”
Lvov, on the other hand, started laughing … softly at first but then with great glee.
Feeling the tension of these two different viewpoints, especially after the brutal video, was disturbing to everyone in the room.
Lvov eventually stifled his laughter and took a sip of water. He said in a gleeful tone. “Don’t you see?” He looked around the room as if waiting for everyone to ‘catch up.’
Finally, Kate said, “You’re not saying that we somehow measured beyond the brain structure—”
Lvov laughed and said triumphantly, “Yes! Isn’t it obvious?” He looked now as if he was lecturing a group of rather slow students. “We’ve been working at mapping the structure and interconnections of the brain in relation to memories, trying to map where memories are stored.” He pointed triumphantly at the screen. “But we’ve gone far, far beyond that. We’ve actually managed to read that man’s memories and convert them to a crude video representation.”
Thad slumped down, possibly in shock. “No, that can’t be.”
Everyone was silent as the video image went on, faded away, and was replaced by another, different video. This time the patient was making out with a girl on a couch. The passion was as vivid as the brutality in the last video had been.
Lvov, still standing, said, “Oh, yes, it can be. And it is! We’ve managed to read memories.” He pointed at Kate. “You need to figure out how to clean this up.” Then at Jared and Frank, “And you need to make sure we have all the processing in the world.” Finally, he looked at Thad and leaned toward him, resting his hands on the table. “Oh, but don’t worry – we’ll get all the funding we could ever need. We’ll get all the funding under the sun. We’re reading minds, people! And we are the first to do it.”
That muttered under his breath, “Oh God. What are people going to do with this sort of technology.”
THE END
Bio:
Jim Henderson is a Colorado writer of fun, varied, and sound mystery and science fiction adventures. He is the author of the Inspector Giskard crime drama series set in near-future Colorado, the 12-book Mantis Saga, the story of the crew of the scout ship Mantis, as well as the Vaziran War military sci-fi series. Intrigue, fun, adventure, aliens, space combat, robots, humor, and excitement abound. Jim is a veteran, cybersecurity professional, and an aficionado of science fiction books, movies, TV, and games. When not working or mentally exploring the universe, he enjoys hiking, kayaking, gaming, and his 8 grandchildren.