Black Star

Chapter Eleven

"The human mind is unlike any other data set." Touchreik stared up at the thirty-four faces looking back at him. "After all, I am assuming you all have one." 

He allowed a ripple of low giggles to wash across his audience. "A simple comm implant can take you to other worlds, communicate with friends in V-World. Your sage never forgets a date, a recipe or a single memory from your life. Yet still, we are powerless when it comes to deciphering the human mind."

He twisted the pointer in his finger and thumb. "The closest we came to replicate the mind is Mother and even she still relies on our mental inputs to make human emotionally charged decisions. All other artificial intelligence is specialised and can perform any specialised task perfectly. Whether that be cooking a meal, flying a spaceship or managing a complete transport system. We don't know where the mind is or where it goes when we lose it." Stopping for effect he looked down at the hypnotised faces.

"All humans were created by a magnificent machine we call mother, all except one that is. Four years ago, I was given brief access to the complete mind trace of a young man from the 21st century. You will remember him as the caveman, frozen since the year 2015 regenerated in 2515."

Touchreik still felt the pain in the pit of his guts when he said brief because brief it was. He'd screamed and complained after it was over but to no avail. The caveman project was shutting down at a days' notice, only a year after Nova had gone. In the short time the project existed, his obsession had driven him to continue work at his own accommodation, often long into the early hours. To do that he had taken home data which was strictly against regulations. Proportionally it was a tiny amount but on the night before that last day he had been close to a breakthrough. In fact, less a breakthrough and more of a mystery. Prout announced to him out of the blue it was over, shutting down.

Being the fellow he was, he kept calm although his head spun with anger and the veins in his neck felt like they would explode.

"I have a few things to collect from the lab," said Touchreik.

"Sure, you ain't being thrown on the street just yet."

"I know."

As he went to walk away, Prout had called out to him.

"Touchreik." He stopped. "I know you're upset, you worked hard on this and I appreciate you taking this decision with a level head."

Touchreik didn't respond because he wasn't taking it with a level head, he just knew he had to get back into that lab one more time. He simply nodded.

"Good things will come from this you know that, professorship allocations? The media won't do you any harm. Those allocations are only months away."

"That sounds good, who knows?" he could feel Wade Prout's eyes boring into him as he walked away. As he marched purposefully back to his laboratory, he thinks one or two colleagues passed him, made greeting, but he can't be sure. Once inside, he placed his palm on one of the data files and an array of data appeared in holo in front of his eyes. He only wanted a small amount of data, but it had to be the right data. He found the files he was looking for, but there was no time to filter through, as long as what he wanted was in there then it would be fine. He motioned with his other hand and the file instantly offered an option.

File size too big - Cancel, Re-do search, trim.

He hit trim and a message popped up.

Done.

He had been working on the mind trace for years but getting a grip of how it worked was a difficulty. Developing a method called arrays. This was a way of joining together information and data. Thoughts, feelings, fantasy and preconceptions all joined to make a thought. With partial information, it was difficult to make sense, but arrays helped.