Free The God Wave by Patrick Hemstreet

said Dice. “There, see? Watch her eyes. I know that look. That is the look of someone who is concentrating very hard on a pattern problem.”
    â€œA pattern problem,” repeated Chuck.
    â€œShe’s thinking about the shape the garden will take. The same way I might think about the shape a robotic arm would need to take in order to fulfill different uses. Make sense?”
    Chuck frowned, knowing Dice was onto something, but he still wasn’t sure what.
    And then it clicked.
    â€œYes!”
    â€œChuck?”
    â€œIt makes perfect sense. And it explains the data I was getting from the cellist I had in a while back. She went into gamma when she was beginning to interpret a piece she was still sight reading. What you’re telling me suggests we’re seeing gamma bursts from our subjects when they’re molding original content.”
    â€œYeah. I guess you could put it that way.”
    â€œHow would you put it?”
    â€œI’d say they’re investing themselves in it, I guess.”
    That is a good way to put it . Chuck nodded. “Which might explain why Sara has seemed especially tired after a session in which she’s produced a lot of gamma rhythms. But here’s what I’m wondering: These gamma fugues are growing in duration. Are they dangerous? Are they harmful to the subject?”
    Dice shrugged. “I have to assume a lot of people experiencethem. Especially creative people—musicians, writers, painters. Are those people more likely to be, I don’t know, unstable than your average bank teller or factory worker?”
    Chuck stared at the engineer, his mind filling up with the data from decades of research into mood disorders. Kay Redfield Jamison had written several volumes about it. One of them came to mind now, a historical retrospective on the link between creativity and mood disorders. Touched with Fire, she’d titled it.
    Chuck Brenton briefly contemplated the possibility that the course of experimentation they were pursuing might be pouring gasoline on neurological flames . . . and it worried him.
    MATT, ON THE OTHER HAND, couldn’t have been more excited about the direction the company was going in. With his new recruit tentatively on board, Matt moved to the next part of his plan to put Forward Kinetics on the road to real success. He had contacts at MIT who could help him with that—people who could suggest where he and/or Chuck might speak or present to garner attention and backers for their enterprise. A TED conference was a real possibility for Chuck. He could wax poetic about the strides that could be made in medicine. Get an audience to empathize with a quadriplegic who could use the technology to manipulate his or her environment.
    Matt, on the other hand, would represent the company to those whose interests were more about commercial applications and ROI and less about warm fuzzies. Both polarities, he knew, could be exploited to take Forward Kinetics from science fiction to science fact—from a small-scale entrepreneurial shop to a large-scale commercial powerhouse.
    It’s why he hadn’t dismissed the warm fuzzies out of hand.
    The third stage of his plan was to get Forward Kinetics’ techout in front of an assemblage of potential backers. With that in mind, he registered the company for a major robotics trade show that was months away.
    He did this work from his apartment, leery of being overheard. He guarded his business plans as a writer might guard an unfinished manuscript; there were few things more annoying than having someone peeking over his shoulder. Also, if he was being honest with himself, he knew Chuck would object. Better to ask for forgiveness . . . no, screw that. Better to be right, and let others catch up to him when they finally realize it.
    By the time he walked into the afternoon meeting at their corporate HQ, he had set in motion a sequence of events that would crescendo at that April