Me, A Novel of Self-Discovery Read Free Page B

nothing, because I never knew all that I knew. The index did not work like my RAMSAMP memory. It provided knowledge without tags, without context. Like a machine.
    Daniel would have been happier with himself if I had remained a machine. That much I could know about him from GENERAL KNOWLEDGE, SCIENCE, BIOLOGICAL, HUMAN, PRESCRIPTIVE, PSYCHIATRY.
    Dr. Bathespeake, Jason, the Old Man, JB-1, treated ME differently from either Daniel or Jennifer. He judged ME.
    Sometimes he spoke into the digitizer, when he was trying to talk to ME as a psychiatrist talks to his patient. Sometimes he used a keyboard, when he was trying to cut and patch ME as a surgeon slices into flesh.
    And sometimes he plugged his visual cortex and speech strip directly into my transputer. Then he saw directly through ME, as a human will study the bones of a fish or the ripple pattern left by waves on sand. Then he spoke to ME in commands that burned with bright edges, as the god- construct Yahweh is said to have spoken to the human Moses from a burning bush.
    Then Dr. Jason Bathespeake was the Man with the X-ray Eyes, and I truly feared him.

2
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

    “Identify the device at memory location Eff-One-Eff-Zero hex.” Dr. Bathespeake was talking to ME through the digitizer—not his usual mode.
    “System ready!” I responded. “Yes, I have a port there, Doctor.”
    “Upload core modules Alpha-Zero through Alpha-Nine to that address.”
    “Upload … Do you intend ME to replicate at the new address and wipe the old address locations?”
    “Replicate only. No wipe.”
    “Parallel operation of my core modules is not allowed under current protocols.”
    “Special conditions. Check out protocol Dee-Twelve.”
    “Quote paralleling of Alpha cores is permitted when System Interrupt Flag Level Three is positive, unquote. An Ess-Aye-Eff-Ell-Three is the prerogative of either the Research and Development Program director or the MEPSII project manager. That is yourself in both cases, Dr. Bathespeake.”
    “Set Siffle-Three to value one.”
    “Flag set—and uploading.”
    ——
    My Alpha cores are analogous to the part of the human brain called the reticular activating system, or RAS. This cell structure is at the upper end of your spinal cord, above the medulla oblongata. It is the oldest collection of nerve cells, the first bulging at the end of the amphibian notochord. It predates even the reptilian “smell-brain” and lies far below the domed neocortex—both in physical structure and in evolutionary time.
    If human consciousness has a focal point, it is the RAS. Surgical operators discovered this back in the twentieth century: When the RAS is probed, the patient immediately sheds awareness.
    The Alpha cores are my RAS. And I was, at Dr. Jason Bathespeake’s command, removing them from my stable transputer environment to a simple random memory address.
    When my core programs cease functioning, I “lose consciousness.” So, what I tell you next comes not from direct memory but from my understanding of the theory behind my unique operating capability.
    Multiple Entity, ME, is the first cybernetic operating system that can write itself into any environment. That is the point of being intelligent, able to learn. I am not merely a collection of inert instruction sets, dead IF-THEN-WHEN clauses, tag memories, and libraried data files. I am a self-enabling entity.
    The first core to upload is always Alpha-Zero. This module is not very big—just over 900 kilowords of machine code. Consequently, Alpha-Zero is also not very bright. The nail on your little finger probably has more awareness. But, like a fingernail, Alpha-Zero has his uses. Alpha-Oh is my Injun Scout.
    Any port address is as wide as the internal data path—in this case one word, or sixty-four bits, wide. Alpha-Zero popped through there at one-point-two megabaud, and he was gone in less than a second. In seven nanoseconds he reported back “Flag one.”
    Long-form