Monkey On Your Back

- by Robert Oschler

(Somewhere in a lab in Washington State..)

Paul admired his friend and co-worker's relentless attention to detail, but sometimes felt that Rick needed a little more 'soul' in his thinking.

"What are you fretting about now?"

Rick made a small grunting noise to let him know he had received the sound of Paul's voice but wasn't going to convert it to words any time soon.

"Rick! You're face is on fire!"

"mmmm" mumbled Rick.

Paul scowled at his friend, thought for a moment, and then blurted out "Rick! Hyperium Logic, Inc. has gone bankrupt! Your employee stock options are worthless!!"

"Huh? What about my stock options???.. ok, har, har, har.." he answered. "Sorry but you know how concerned I am about the latest congressional hearings on our work. Everything has to be perfect.."

"Or we'll be perfectly out of a job. I know, I know. But you should come up for a little mental air every now and then."

Rick sighed heavily and grudgingly dropped the neural link into his shirt pocket. "Ok, what's up?"

"Did you see the latest inter-sync trace patterns? They're, well, too organized.."

"Christ! You're complaining that they're too organized!? I'd think.."’

"Yes" Paul snapped. "too damn organized!"

—

Dark grey storm clouds dropped thick sheets of tiny icy daggers on the busy residents of Seattle. Carl Novak didn't need his PhD in Advanced Statistics to figure out that he was going to get wet. Real wet. He ran into the crowded Starbucks and sat down to read his morning paper. After watching the pretty blonde at the counter take someone's order, and realizing he had just read the same paragraph three times, he was amazed to find where his thoughts had wandered off to. An old Wild Planet episode had darted nervously into his mind, about African Jungle predators. A chill ran down his spine as he remembered the way fear swept the prey animals like a brush fire, as they frantically ran into every dirty hole or bush they could find, before something awful came. Something big, hungry, and with far too many fangs. Why was he thinking about it now?

Ben Viant had the answer even though he had no degrees in animal psychology or anything else. Ben was big, hungry for a killing, and as he entered the Starbuck's he pulled out a pair of .45 caliber fangs to feed his lust for violence and blood. He didn't care about Carl's PhD or even the horrible conclusion that had just shrieked into his well-educated brain. Ben just wanted to shoot somebody, anybody, and with a gleeful squeeze of a cocaine triggered finger he did.

Carl's thoughts were shattered by the fast-moving piece of lead that ruptured his neurons. Electric storms in his dying brain jerked around spastically, like a squirrel struck by a car, it's body dancing hideously out of control until silenced in a skull-crushing snap under the wheel of the next car. But that merciful snap never came. Ben had left when the sirens came without firing another shot. Carl never heard the sirens as he died and drifted towards a restful sleep. Unfortunately for him, that sleep never came and, his nightmare was just beginning.

—

Rick ran his fingers through his greasy unwashed black hair and hissed at Paul "Oh Jesus not again. You're not going to start acting like those yoyo's in the Null State movement are you?"

Paul winced noticeably at the insult but pressed on. "No Rick. I love my job and you know it. And I think the work we do is vital to the future of human beings but we still have to be responsible to, to, … you know who."

"You mean you-know-what. You have gone Null-side. That's such a load of crap! You know the precautions we take and the tests we do."

"Yes but these latest inter-sync traces are weird. Have you even bothered to bring them up in the PatternVid lately?"

Rick was getting madder by the second. If Paul hadn't been the only other person who understood his work he would have let him have it good. Instead he gritted his teeth and squeezed out an icy "No."

"Why not, too busy showering?"

That did it. The PatternVid was an astonishing invention for visualizing brain activity that had made MRI and other brainwave scanners obsolete. Even though Rick knew the PatternVid was Paul's precious brainchild he shouted "Because I'm not going to be swayed by the idiotic 3D images of a billion dollar lava lamp!" with that Rick swung open the lab door and began to storm out, scattering inky black hyperlogic chips and biolink cell contacts as he did.

Paul lifted his hefty steak-fed frame and gave chase yelling "The PatternVid is not a goddamn lava lamp! It's an effective visualization tool for.." Paul smacked his right shoulder hard against the lab door as he gave chase. "Ow! Crap!.." he barked. "Rick come back here! Dammit!…”

—

Carl didn't know how he got here. In fact, he didn't know where here was. He had no memory of anything, in fact, he didn't even know he was Carl but here it came again. A rush of panicky feeling gripped him as he moved his mind in every direction at once. But no direction offered any comfort, or light, or god help him, even air! He was trapped. Horribly, horribly trapped. But here it came again, and whatever he did he had to respond to what it wanted. He didn't know why, but he just knew with eternal desperation that he had to.

—

After a quick pit stop in the bathroom to examine his shoulder, Paul caught up with Rick in the cafeteria. He was stuffing down donuts like he always did when he felt attacked. And saying anything remotely bad about the HyperMind project was a worse attack on him then killing his first born, if he had one. But Rick didn't like children, wives, or even worse, people. And the one person he felt he did have a bond with was coming after him with a vengeance. He tried to hide behind his doughy sugar-bomb like a 3 year-old playing peek-a-boo, but Paul wasn't playing.

Paul wheezed as he came to a clumsy stop. He wasn't an overly spiritual man. Hell, he could no longer believe in God with the work he did. But those damn recurring nightmares were gnawing at his soul like busy rats in a ghetto kitchen. "Dammit Rick! I need to talk about this!"

"You need to exercise too!"

"What?"

"You, you.. arggh sorry Paul. But you know how I get when you act like this. I thought you were the one person I could rely on." Paul calmed down a bit and pulled out a chair and sat down. He gazed longingly at the pile of donuts on the table but after Rick's remark, he just couldn't get himself to eat one. He sighed and said "You can Rick. You can. It's, well, it's..."

"Having nightmares again?"

"Yes, nightmare actually. It's the same one, over and over again. I'm back in college doing my thesis on advanced pattern visualization, using deep logic trace scans, remember that thesis?"

"Yes of course, I thought it was brilliant and that started our friendship."

"Well in the nightmare, I'm doing a study with Einstein, my favorite white rat, and suddenly I'm him and I'm in the maze. Except it's completely dark. I can feel the pattern of the maze like a faint outline in my head, but nothing's solid and everythings sluggish and dim. All I am is this tired impulse to keep going.. to find something.. to keep moving.." Paul drifted off but Rick could see the receding horror squirming beneath his gaze as he finished talking.

"It's just a dream!" Rick looked thoughtfully at Paul for a moment and added " Ok, ok. How about we do a another full session in the PatternVid?"

"Lava lamp?!" Paul snipped.

Rick tilted his head sadly "I'm real sorry about that stupid comment Paul. You know I didn't mean that." Paul nodded a small forgiveness and Rick continued "So as I was saying, we'll do a full session in the PatternVid and match HyperMind's latest inter-sync traces against all known biological neural patterns. Even backwards across different time scales!"

Paul exhaled with great relief and saw that Rick the mad scientist had been replaced with Rick the good friend. "Ok, yes, thanks man."

The two returned back to the lab with some more playful banter about lava lamps and jelly donuts…

—

Carl-who-did-not-know-he-was-Carl knew it was coming back again. It always did. He was so, so, tired. And he ached for rest. He was broken-bone tired, fatigue incarnate, and he just wanted to stop. But he couldn't and it was back. WHAT THE HELL WAS IT!? If it had form or color it would have been an unyielding metal grey battleship. But it had no form, no color, no heart, no pity, or even ears to hear him beg for mercy. It did not even want anything from him, but demanded it none-the-less. And he had to respond, he didn't want to, he just wanted to stop, please dear god just let me stop! But he had to respond. He had to meet the task, mirror the demand, organize his thoughts like a weary defending army that must fight to the death. But death never came, only the formless it-thing came. Again, and again, and again…

—

Paul and Rick exited the PatternVid and removed their visual cortex optilinks, which came loose with a snap from the surgically implanted neural bridges. They didn't have to remove the optilinks but the annoying 3D optical "ghosts" from the PatternVid seemed to evaporate quicker if they did. Engineering would hear about this.

"You see!" Rick trumpeted eagerly. "Not one known biological brainwave pattern matched the inter-sync trace. Ha!"

Paul massaged his temples with relief and mild indignation. "Yes and we searched both the global archives and the government's secret military archives for even a moderate match."

"None!" Rick clapped his hands together with obvious delight.

"Ok call me Mr. Bonehead Null State movement guy. Perhaps its my religious upbringing."

"We could remove that if you like."

"What?" Paul shot Rick a surprised look. "Oh you're a real stand-up comedian. If we could do things like that we wouldn't have to use human brains for the hyperlogic companion circuits."

"I could try doing it with a cafeteria utensil?" offered Rick whimsically.

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me instead of a frontal lobotomy?"

Rick and Paul laughed the way friends laugh after a bad fight passes without doing any real damage. They drifted back into a minor ethics discussion as they left the lab again.

"So , do you think we'll do well at the next congressional hearings?" Rick asked him nervously.

"Yes! Yes! Hell you just made me a complete convert didn't you?

"Yes, that's true. But ever since the Null State movement started demanding we disconnect the donated brains, I've been really worried." Rick thumbed his chin nervously.

"I know, so have I, but the data proves it. The donor brains are dead. No dreams, no feelings, no higher or even mid-level thoughts. Zip, zilch, nada. Just wonderfully powerful computation companions to the silicon hyperlogic circuits."

"And with them computers finally can be creative and understand complex patterns we never could get them to recognize before. Like the HyperMind!"

As Rick beamed proudly with that last thought, Paul snuck in one last probing question..

"Would you fill out a donor card Rick?"

"Yes of course! How wonderful to be of such great use to society, my brain forever running vitally important calculations back and forth with the silicon hyperlogic circuits. To be part of the HyperMind!” Rick paused cagily for moment and asked “Would you?"

"I g-guess so."

"You g-g-g-guess?" Rick said teasingly, almost challengingly.

"Well that dam nightmare.." Rick ignored him and chose to stay in the happy moment that occurred a few worried sentences ago. He did that because he could choose to do so, and choose to sleep, and choose to dream, and most importantly.. choose to stop."

—

Carl-not-Carl was way beyond thinking about the donor card he had signed. The donor card that allowed Hyperium Logic to harvest his brain for the HyperMind project. He wanted to scream but no longer knew what screaming was. He had no lungs, nor throat, no body to do so anyways. The anxiety no longer left him alone anymore. He lived in that frozen suffocating state of thick oily panic that was him now, like those heavy fever dreams that seem to stop time and hold you stuck, squirming like a fly in a sticky web that brings everything to a grinding halt. As if he was eternally holding his breath after a deep slow torturous exhale, forever desperate for air. And here it came again, demanding, always demanding, forcing him to think when all he wanted to do was to stop…

to rest…

to die.

—- <end> —-