Free The 2084 Precept by Anthony D. Thompson Page A

thinking about it. She knew me, she
recognized me, so there was no input from you, was there? It was
just a coincidence. In fact, the more I think about it, it could
also have been a coincidence that that waiter dropped his
tray."
    "Some coincidences," he replied, "don't you
think? No…with regard to that young lady, I merely thought up a
scenario as to why she might want to meet you this evening, or
rather why she would think she might want to meet you. And I
hacked into her mind and placed the thoughts."
    "Just like that? No work involved? Were you born with this ability?"
    "Not really, but it is something we learn
when very young. The result of technical advances made during our
evolution. It is a simple technology, one which your species will
fully acquire in the not too distant future. In fact, you have
already started. There are documented cases of certain doctors
healing patients by means of hypnosis. You have hypnotists who can
do other things, including on stage. And the next step for you is
to learn how to communicate with each other without the need to use
either speech or the written form."
    Now that did send a small shiver up
my spine. Or down it, I am never sure in which direction the shiver
is supposed to go. Because I happen to know by chance that we have
recently started to do things like that. Using magnetic resonance
tomography, for example.
    "During my research into this field, I came
across a neurology professor in Canada," Jeremy said, "who has
recently commenced communicating with a traffic-accident patient
who has been in a coma for over a decade, albeit awake. The patient
is placed in a kind of brain activity scanner and is asked
questions such as 'are you in pain?' and the scanner reads the
resulting brain activity and determines the yes or no answer. That
is a first step," continued Jeremy. "It can only work if the
patient's reticular activating system is still working of course,
but that appears to be so in this case."
    "And", he continued, "I also see that you
have made initial advances at universities around the world. In the
USA, I have read with interest of the work going on at Harvard's
Laboratory of Neuromodulation and the research at Washington
University, among others. I have read that the latter has two
neuron research experts, Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco, who have
been able to send magnetic impulse commands from Rao's brain to
Stocco's, by means of computer-connected headsets and using the
Internet. I understand that an early experiment allowed Rao to
cause one of Stocco's fingers to move. Without words, you
understand."
    "Did you say the Internet, Mr. Parker? That
sounds a little far-fetched if I may say so."
    "You may indeed say so. But your brains are
capable of far more than the Internet. I notice that your World
Wide Web currently has about 20 billion websites which are
connected by about a trillion links. Your brain tissue, however,
contains nearly 100 billion neurons, connected by about 100
trillion synapses. Not bad when you consider that it weighs only
1.4 kilograms on average. And you have roughly 90 billion glial
cells which, by the way, are the non-neuronal cells providing a
support function to the neurons and certain of the neurons'
activities. Human brains, the intelligent ones I should say, are
capable of far more than the Internet. Just imagine the
potential."
    I was certainly imagining all sorts of
things. But it all sounded too theoretical to me. The world is
littered with brilliant hypotheses which have never made it. On the
other hand, it has to be said, the world is littered with a
few brilliant hypotheses which have made it.
    “Also of interest to me,” continued Jeremy,
“was the alternative approach being pursued by your Kavli Institute
of Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology in Holland.
They have reliably achieved the teleportation of quantum
information (the ‘spin state’ of electrons in this instance) from
one place to another without