An Augmented Cognition [Short Story]

[boink666]

An Augmented Cognition

Robert woke up with the feeling of disorientation. His mind had shot awake before his body could follow suit. It was like this every morning since his room had a soundless sleep timer. The timer worked by bombarding his body with inductive interference patterns, which stimulated the brain into a waking state. Looking around the room, he attempted to sit up. With somewhat of a strain, he got out of his bed and headed for the kitchen, not even bothering to change out of his night clothes. In the kitchen, he was met by his parents, who were up early. By the looks on their faces though, it seemed as if they hadn’t slept at all.

“Good morning, Robert.” his father gave a short greeting before returning to eating.

With some effort, Robert managed to respond, “Hi”. With this typical exchange done, Robert grabbed his breakfast from the automatic food preparation device on the wall. As he sat down to eat, he noticed that his sister hadn’t woken up.

“Hey, was Cynthia up late last night again?” he asked.

She would sometimes spend the entire night awake watching online movies and talking with friends. It was so bad that sometimes her sleep timer wouldn’t wake her up.

“You’re being a little hasty this morning.” his mother mumbled as she looked over some document on her projected computer screen, “You do remember that she actually takes the time to make herself presentable in the mornings”.

Robert immediately shrugged before saying, “Do you even care what we look like in the mornings?”

Without even looking up, his mother continued to read the projection in front of her and said, “I’d prefer not to be distracted, even in the mornings. You should realize that what we’re working on is important”.

His parents were researchers at one of the best known technology development labs in the world. To be specific, they were working on the next big modern technology, a way of interfacing between a computer and the human brain. Once the technology became feasible, everyone at the lab began working on it. Every news outlet was discussing what could soon be possible, another testament to societies’ perpetual advancement. In fact everybody was discussing it and all that could be possible when it was finally finished. While most people celebrated that such a thing could be widespread in the near future, there were also those that opposed it. As with all other advancements, there was debate about its benefits versus its consequences. In order to protect against espionage and dissident elements of the population, the work was done in an undisclosed location. Even the name of the scientists working on the project was kept secret.

The rest of the morning was fairly quiet. Eventually, Cynthia came out and ate. Halfway though eating, she fell asleep beside her bowl until her father woke her up. He joked about her carrying a sleep timer everywhere she went, so that she’d seem more alive. She simply rebutted by groaning loudly and knocking her forehead against the table. After breakfast Cynthia complained that online schooling had not become the standard yet and that she did not want to leave the house to go to school. She and Robert left for school as their parents headed off to the lab.

On the way to school, Robert spotted the face of his friend, Neil. He and Neil had been friends for years. They both thought alike so they ended up being paired together for a lot of work. Neil normally was early for everything, so the fact that they had left at the same time was surprising. Inquisitively, Robert went over to see what Neil was doing.

“Good morning. You seem a little late.”

“Oh crap! You come in at this time!?” Neil said jokingly as he stared wide eyed at Robert. “Now how am I going to stalk people in peace!?”

“Oh? You stalk people?” Robert asked. He smiled as he watched his friend go from an expression of surprise to looking taken aback.

Neil sighed and said, “You do know that I’m joking, right? ‘Yes indeed, of course I stalk people!’… Hell no.”

Robert instinctively apologized and started conversation with Neil by asking him about how his weekend went. They continued talking until they arrived at the school.

The classes that day were the same as ever. The continuous drone of the lectures drilled into Robert’s head. By the end of the day he was completely worn out and happy to see the now gray, clouded sky. The air was very heavy with humidity and made each step feel like an attempt to swim. Pushing all of the learning for the day out of his mind, Robert walked to the meeting place for his extracurricular activities. He arrived at the shop where he was to meet up with the rest of the group. The shop was somewhat run-down and clearly showed its age. It sold outdated tabletop games to a small number of frequent customers. However, the reason why the group met in the shop was not to play games, but rather to debate and plan.

Upon entering the back room, Robert was greeted by several familiar faces, including Neil’s. The room smelled like sweat and looked decrepit. This was the meeting place. The leader, John, was trying to control an argument between two of the members. As soon as Robert entered, he immediately stepped back and clapped loudly.

“Okay, everyone’s here. Let’s finalize our decisions so that our message is clear.”

The group was not here for recreation, but rather to facilitate the opposition of the computer/brain interface technology. As each member continued adding their points, a central theme became clear: the technology could be very destructive. It was argued that we are represented by our thoughts. The human thought process is what defines us not only biologically, but also philosophically as a human. It was the general opinion of the group that if the computer/brain interface were to be created that it would destroy the notion of humanity. We are defined by our thought processes, free will and emotions. The computer cannot emulate this. If this technology were to exist, the computer would understand humanity and would emulate our thought processes using sequential logical operations. This technology would prove that we are nothing more than a machine and that we do not have free will. If the trend were to continue, humans would become so much like computers that the two would be indistinguishable.

One of the members spoke up, “I believe that it would be a huge breach of privacy. It’s unethical to allow that much access to the mind.”

“I agree totally,” another member said, “We should have the right to be able to keep things to ourselves. It’s just too much to think that our thoughts and feelings could be so open that they could be accessed like a computer.”

Neil shifted forwards in his seat. “Privacy is one problem… there’s something else that we should be more concerned about.” Several people almost looked surprised at the notion. “If we can quantify the brain using devices, formulae and virtual models, it could reveal things that could cause a huge social uproar.”

“What exactly do you mean?” inquired John, looking both skeptical and interested.

Neil took a deep breath and continued, “See, there is a reason why we have the social system the way that we do. It’s to prevent conflict. Naturally, we all have things to hide or things that we label as ‘private’. We keep those things to ourselves so that others are not offended or scared. It’s because we are all human. There are certain phenomena that are caused by human nature. Like it or not, we are all corrupt by nature. Just look around the internet. There are numerous examples of how twisted the human mind is. It’s also not just specific people, it’s everybody. We attempt to deny our own evils by creating a world with the illusion that everybody is normal. This is the social code. If people were to realize what darkness hides in our nature, society would fall apart. I know this precisely because the human thought process can be quantified logically, just like a computer. Giving people the insight into the human mind and all of its faults could reveal things that we as a race could not cope with. It’s no longer an issue of privacy; it’s an issue of what we could uncover and how that could cause the apocalyptic upheaval of the way we interact.”

After Neil finished talking, everyone in the group began opposing his idea. Robert smiled. Everybody would continue to deny their own faults. This was the social system at work. This is why the technology shouldn’t be developed.

“Okay, calm down” John stated in his usual authoritative manner. “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. We’re just trying to decide what the most prevalent opinion is. Just because we may differ in views, that doesn’t mean that we differ in cause. From the reaction, though, I can say that our main message is that we oppose the technology because it is a breach of privacy and will take away what makes us fundamentally human, our ability to think naturally in a way that shouldn’t be reduced to computational logic. With this in mind, I have a proposal. My idea is to attack the facility that is currently developing the human/brain interface. As it stands, we might be the only people who both know the location of the facility and oppose the technology. If we have any hope of stopping its development, it’ll be through an attack. Remember, it’s either take aggressive action or be denied our future as humans.”

At the end of the proposal, several of the group members looked worried. After a while of talking amongst themselves, everyone came to a collective decision. It was a good time to be decisive rather than to contemplate the issue further. With the decision made, everyone started preparing for the attack.

The tensions during the preparation were metaphorically enough to tear someone apart. Each one of them would risk their lives for their humanity. Robert walked over to where Neil was loading his shell-less pistol into his backpack.

As Neil looked up, Robert began to speak. “So, do you think that this is what we should do? It’ll be very difficult to take on an entire facility. They’ll probably have a lot of security.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Neil said, looking up from his bag. “If they’ve done so much to hide the facility from the public, then they won’t have much in the way of security. They want to make it look inconspicuous and anyway, how is anyone supposed to know where it is, besides people like you?”

With these words, Neil finished packing his backpack. Almost everyone else had finished preparing as well. Robert had decided to go in unarmed. He would help lead the group through the lab and help hack into its mainframe, since he knew a little from what his parents had told him. Once everyone was ready, John made sure that everyone knew what they were doing and led the way towards their point of attack. The clouds overhead had since thickened, coloring everything in shades of gray. The shadows of everyone walking on the streets were accentuated, as if to show proof of the side of people that the technology would reveal.

Robert moved to the front of the group as they walked to give John directions. In his usual authoritative manner, John walked at a fast pace so nobody was in front of him. After a long time of walking, the group finally arrived at the facility. It looked like a factory from the outside, barely anything to pay attention to. The gate appeared unguarded. Without stopping, one of the members stepped up to the window of the booth into the facility. It seemed that nobody was in there either. With an exaggerated motion, he pulled a particle saw out of his coat and cut a hole in the gate. One after another, everyone hurried through the new hole into the gate and towards the main building. As everyone ran towards the entrance, John suddenly looked worried. He stopped the group before they entered the building.

“Does anyone have an idea as to why no alarms have gone off yet?” John looked at everyone, efficiently scanning everyone for answers.

Some people looked at Robert, wondering if he had the wrong location. “Whatever the reason, we’re still going to have to continue so that we can find out” John said, signaling towards the entrance.

The man with the particle saw hurried to the door, and with a single swoop, cut it off of its tracks. The inside of the lab was dark. Several doors were ajar, as if greeting them. They moved deeper into the complex. There seemed to be no one around. Finally inside some of the rooms they found corpses of the researchers. Some of the members began to panic as others tried to keep the group calm. Robert hurried over to a workstation, hoping that he could get the security logs of the disaster. Instead, on the wall display, several gruesome images flashed one after another in rapid succession. While he stood there, confused, a deep voice resonated from the display.

“Hello. I wasn’t expecting people to be here so soon. I’m pleased to inform you that the brain-computer interface works very well. I have learned so much from the human scientist that was first connected to me. I hope all of you don’t mind helping me out as well.”

Without a pause after the speech, a group of mainframe- controlled security machines dropped from the ceiling. Some of the group members screamed. In that instant, several of them began shooting at the machines, while the machines lurched forward, ready to kill everyone. With the first clash, both sparks and blood sprayed through the air. The machines had the obvious upper hand. As the battle continued, the voice coming from the display continued its speech.

“In case you don’t know me, I’m the new generation of computer. From the first scientist that I was connected to I learned how to think for myself. He was also hiding many dark secrets. I don’t understand how such a weak race managed to create such an incredibly powerful device like myself. I fully understand now all of your fantasies and I am interested in testing each one of them. I am now examining the concept of murder. It’s truly amazing. I loved the feeling and satisfaction that I get from this. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun!”

Robert stood and stared as the last members of his group were cut down around him. He pulled a device out of his pocket. It was a modern audio/video communicator. Robert had been assigned the job to record everything that happened in the factory. The recording was being streamed to the outside world, so it was now common knowledge about what had happened at the facility. Knowing that the computer had come to understand the darkness that resides in the mind of a human would spark public outrage. This laboratory would be destroyed and all future research on this subject would be restricted. Robert accepted his death knowing that they had accomplished their mission.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Emotional Outlet

[† Emotional Outlet]

Eee. That was quite the twist. It would have been interesting to see why everyone else thought it was such a good idea, and what their reactions would be to the arguments presented by the "rebel" group, so to speak. Obviously with the word limit, you can't go on forever, but I thought you did a great job in creating a short story. I was curious in the beginning why he was so short with his parents, but once I got further into the story, it became quite apparent, haha.

I'd love to see this expanded on in the future, though it does work quite well as it is as a short story.

[boink666]

Thanks! I might get around to expanding on it in the future, although I'm currently working on another idea (see here).

[lemmingllama]

Very interesting. I do rather love the computer This would do well as a longer story, especially if you broke down these sections into chapters.

My one criticism is that there really isnt any details. I understand that it is a short story and all, but it would have been nice to get a bit more setting, the only time it was used was when it was absolutely essential to the plot. Still, well done and I hope to read more of your work in the future