Free Playtime by Bart Hopkins Jr. Page A

making something artificial that has the same properties." 
     "You think artificial intelligence is going
to happen?" 
     "Yeah," says Blaine. "It's getting
closer every day. On one side, you've got people making instruments that allow
you to control physical items with only your brain waves. Controlling
artificial limbs and machines. On the other, you've got people working to make
machines that learn, similar to the way the brain learns, from experience. Yep,
I think it's going to happen." 
     They have the TV on with the sound off again. To
soccer: that guy who is supposed to be the best player in the world by a
quantum leap is playing. Neither of them knows much about the game. Todd has
one of the huge books of the brain that is full of diagrams and pictures on his
lap. The AC is droning away. Every once in a while the dog next door starts
barking and won't stop. It barks when cars come down the street or birds fly
by. Snaps at insects sometimes. Blaine has seen it. 
     "So what is the main hang-up keeping all
that from happening?" Todd asks. 
     "Technology, man. They just don't have machinery
that's good enough to capture all the movement and action that's going on. But
it's going to happen." 
     "What about the MRI and all that?" 
     "Good, but not what they finally need. It's
machinery like that that has made the explosion of knowledge in the last ten or
fifteen years possible. For the first time they could really see what's
happening inside someone's brain. Before that, they studied the brains of
people that had lesions and mental deficits, after they had died. That was all
they had." 
     "You're talking about people with brain
damage." 
     "Yep." 
     "Anything new coming down the pike right
now?" 
     "Something new could come any day,"
says Blaine, getting up to look out the peephole on the door. He loves that
thing, gives him a panoramic view of the porch and street outside, the house
next door. Everything real small, though. "It's like airplanes or
electricity. One day you're in the dark using lanterns, the next thing you know
you have cold storage for food, appliances, lights, and TV. Satellites in space,
and jets flying by." 
     "Well," Todd says, "it took a
while for all that to happen." 
     "Blink of an eye in the big picture,"
Blaine says. "Blink of an eye." 
     They turn the sound back on and watch the soccer
game. The stadium is filled with over a hundred thousand people going wild.
People die in Europe every year at these games: fan fights or stadium
collapses. Europeans are nuts for soccer. Blaine doesn't really get the
attraction. Todd must be thinking along the same lines. He says, "Not like
the NFL, is it." He's alternating between the brain book and the TV,
watching for a few minutes, flipping a page, watching some more, flipping a
page. 
     "Any particular companies you like in the
brain field, anybody doing big things right now?" he asks. 
    Finally they get moving. Blaine fixes some tuna
sandwiches and chips, throws the makings on hoagie buns with cheese and melts
them in the oven. He wants to roll up to the beach and see Renee before it gets
too late. 
     The club she is working at is a big fancy joint
in one of the large hotels on the Galveston beachfront. Sometime they have a
band playing, but not tonight. He and Todd had changed into Tees with sports
jackets over them, jeans on. Trying to look nice. Blaine doesn't go in there
much. He doesn't really like to sit around and watch the guys hit on Renee. 
     The hotel entrance is grand, ceiling over twenty
feet up, the club over to the left, with the walls facing the gulf all glass
from waist-high, so the beach is right there in panorama. The club is circular
with the bar set in the center. The lights are clusters that hang chandelier-style
and can be brought from dark-night dim to spotlight by the guy at the bar. Most
of the time, like now, they are dim. Seats at the bar or small, round tables
with cushioned, wicker chairs. Carpet