Philips shook his head. Michaels was on fire with excitement.
“We’ve created true artificial intelligence! We’ve made computers that think. They learn and they reason. It had to come, and we did it!” Michaels grabbed Martin’s arm and pulled him into the hall connecting the two old amphitheaters. There between the two-tiered lecture rooms was the door that led into the old Microbiology and Physiology labs. When Michaels opened it, Martin saw the inside had been reinforced with steel. Behind it was a second door. It too was reinforced and secured. Michaels unlocked it with a special key and pulled it open. It was like stepping into a vault.
Martin staggered under the impact of what he saw. The old labs with their small rooms and slate-top experiment tables had been removed. Instead Philips found himself in a hundred-foot-long room with no windows. Down the center was a row of huge glass cylinders filled with clear liquid.
“This is our most valuable and productive preparation,” said Michaels, patting the side of the first cylinder. “Now I know your first impression will be emotional. It was for all of us. But believe me; the rewards are worth the sacrifice.”
Martin slowly began to walk around the container. It was at least six feet high and three feet in diameter. Inside, submerged in what Martin later learned was cerebrospinal fluid, were the living remains of Katherine Collins. She floated in a sitting position with her arms suspended over her head. A respiration unit was functioning, indicating that she was alive. But her brain had been completely exposed. There was no skull. Most of the face was gone except for the eyes, which had been dissected free and covered with contact lenses. An endotracheal tube issued from her neck.
Her arms had also been carefully dissected to extract the ends of the sensory nerves. These nerve endings looped back like strands of a spider web to connect with electrodes buried within the brain.
Philips made a slow complete circle around the cylinder. An awful weakness spread over him and his legs threatened to give way.
“You probably know,” said Michaels, “that significant advances in computer science, like feedback, came from studying biological systems. It’s really what cybernetics is all about. Well, we’ve taken the natural step and gone to the human brain itself, not studying it like psychology, which thinks of it as a mysterious black box.” Suddenly, Philips remembered Michaels using the enigmatic term on the day he presented Martin with the computer program. Now he understood. “We’ve studied it like any other vastly complicated machine. And we’ve succeeded, beyond our dreams. We’ve discovered how the brain stores its information, how it accomplishes parallel processing of information rather than the inefficient serial processing of yesterday’s computers, and how the brain is organized in a functionally hierarchical system. Best of all, we’ve learned how to design and build a mechanical system that mirrors the brain and has these same functions. And it works, Martin! It works beyond your wildest imagination!”
Michaels had nudged Philips to continue down the row of cylinders, looking in at the exposed brains of the young women, all at different levels of vivisection. At the last cylinder Philips paused. The subject was in the earliest state of preparation. Philips recognized the remains of the face. It was Kristin Lindquist.
“Now, listen,” said Michaels. “I know it’s shocking when you first see it. But this scientific breakthrough is so big that it is inconceivable to contemplate the immediate benefits. In medicine alone, it will revolutionize every field. You’ve already seen what our very preliminary program will do with a skull X ray. Philips, I don’t want you to make any snap decisions, you understand?”
They’d finished the trip around the room, which was a marriage between a hospital and a computer installation. In the corner was what appeared to be a complicated life-support setup, like an intensive-care unit. Sitting in front of the monitors was a man in a long white coat. Michaels’ and Philips’ arrival had not disturbed his concentration.
Standing again in front of Katherine Collins, Philips found words for the first time: “What is going into this subject’s brain?” His voice was flat, unemotional.