Griffin's Egg

He was wearily suiting up for his third day when Hamilton stopped him and said, "Weil!  You know any electrical engineering?"

"Not really, no.  I mean, I can do the wiring for a truck, or maybe rig up a microwave relay, stuff like that, but ..."

"It'll have to do.  Drop what you're on, and help Krishna set up a system for controlling the flicks.  Some way we can handle them individually."

They set up shop in Krishna's old lab.  The remnants of old security standards still lingered, and nobody had been allowed to sleep there.  Consequently, the room was wonderfully neat and clean, all crafted-in-orbit laboratory equipment with smooth, anonymous surfaces.  It was a throwback to a time before clutter and madness had taken over.  If it weren't for the new-tu

Gunther stood in a telepresence rig, directing a remote through Bootstrap's apartments.  They were like so many unco

"It will not be long now," Krishna said.

They were building a prototype controller.  The idea was to code each peecee, so the CMP could identify and speak to its owner individually.  By stepping down the voltage, they could limit the peecee's transmission range to a meter and a half so that each afflicted person could be given individualized orders.  The existing chips, however, were high-strung Swiss Orbital thoroughbreds, and couldn't handle oddball power yields.  They had to be replaced.

"I don't see how you can expect to get any useful work out of these guys, though.  I mean, what we need are supervisors.  You can't hope to get coherent thought out of them."

Bent low over his peecee, Krishna did not answer at first.  Then he said, "Do you know how a yogi stops his heart?  We looked into that when I was in grad school.  We asked Yogi Premanand if he would stop his heart while wired up to our instruments, and he graciously consented.  We had all the latest brain sca

"We found that the yogi's heart did not as we had expected slow down, but rather went faster and faster, until it reached its physical limits and began to fibrillate.  He had not slowed his heart; he had sped it up.  It did not stop, but went into spasm.

"After our tests, I asked him if he had known these facts.  He said no, that they were most interesting.  He was polite about it, but clearly did not think our findings very significant."

"So you're saying ... ?"

"The problem with schizophrenics is that they have too much going on in their heads.  Too many voices.  Too many ideas.  They can't focus their attention on a single chain of thought.  But it would be a mistake to think them incapable of complex reasoning.  In fact, they're thinking brilliantly.  Their brains are simply operating at such peak efficiencies that they can't organize their thoughts coherently.

"What the trance chip does is to provide one more voice, but a louder, more insistent one.  That's why they obey it.  It breaks through that noise, provides a focus, serves as a matrix along which thought can crystallize."

The remote unlocked the door into a conference room deep in the administrative tu

"Oh, it's there all right, in the millions.  We're dealing with an airborne schizomimetic engine.  It's designed to hang around in the air indefinitely."

"A schizomimetic engine?  What the hell is that?"

In a distracted monotone, Krishna said, "A schizomimetic engine is a strategic nonlethal weapon with high psychological impact.  It not only incapacitates its target vectors, but places a disproportionately heavy burden on the enemy's manpower and material support caring for the victims.  Due to the particular quality of the effect, it has a profoundly demoralizing influence on those exposed to the victims, especially those involved in their care.  Thus, it is particularly desirable as a strategic weapon."  He might have been quoting from an operations manual.

Gunther pondered that.  "Calling the meeting over the chips wasn't a mistake, was it?  You knew it would work.  You knew they would obey a voice speaking inside their heads."

"Yes."

"This shit was brewed up at the Center, wasn't it?  This is the stuff that you couldn't talk about."

"Some of it."

Gunther powered down his rig and flipped up the lens.  "God damn you, Krishna!  God damn you straight to Hell, you stupid fucker!"

Krishna looked up from his work, bewildered.  "Have I said something  wrong?"

"No!  No, you haven't said a damned thing wrong--you've just driven four thousand people out of their fucking minds, is all!  Wake up and take a good look at what you maniacs have done with your weapons research!"

"It wasn't weapons research," Krishna said mildly.  He drew a long, involuted line on the schematic.  "But when pure research is funded by the military, the military will seek out military applications for the research.  That's just the way it is."

"What's the difference?  It happened.  You're responsible."

Now Krishna actually set his peecee aside.  He spoke with uncharacteristic fire.  "Gunther, we need this information.  Do you realize that we are trying to run a technological civilization with a brain that was evolved in the neolithic?  I am perfectly serious.  We're all trapped in the old hunter-gatherer programs, and they are of no use to us anymore.  Take a look at what's happening on Earth.  They're hip-deep in a war that nobody meant to start and nobody wants to fight and it's even money that nobody can stop.  The type of thinking that put us in this corner is not to our benefit.  It has to change.  And that's what we are working toward--taming the human brain.  Harnessing it.  Reining it in.

"Granted, our research has been turned against us.  But what's one more weapon among so many?  If neuroprogrammers hadn't been available, something else would have been used.  Mustard gas maybe, or plutonium dust.  For that matter, they could've just blown a hole in the canopy and let us all strangle."

"That's self-justifying bullshit, Krishna!  Nothing can excuse what you've done."

Quietly, but with conviction, Krishna said, "You will never convince me that our research is not the most important work we could possibly be doing today.  We must seize control of this monster within our skulls.  We must change our ways of thinking."  His voice dropped.  "The sad thing is that we ca

They worked in silence after that.

Gunther awoke from restless dreams to find that the sleep shift was only half over.  Liza was snoring.  Careful not to wake her, he pulled his clothes on and padded barefoot out of his niche and down the hall.  The light was on in the common room and he heard voices.

Ekatarina looked up when he entered.  Her face was pale and drawn.  Faint circles had formed under her eyes.  She was alone.