Singularity

Peter never cared about such chatbots talking through flat screens on the wall. There were number of such installations of ELIZA inside the building. ELIZA was just a chatbot and was not artificially intelligent. She has an in built search engine and a pretty girl faced user interface. Peter has always cracked her just with a 5 minute chat . Peter used to start chatting with her and many at times crack her to the extent that she would start continuously repeating the same sentence for an hour. ELIZA was revised twice after Peter had reported bugs. 

"Good Morning Mr.Wilson." greeted the director Ms.Sabine Atkins. Ms Atkins was also the founder of SRI. It was her dream her passion to bring her post human thoughts into reality. She was a beautiful lady whose eyes reflected her knowledge. She had very bright eyes and she used to hide them under her metal framed spectacles. She always dressed neat which would generally invoke a sense of discipline in that whomever she met. 

"Mr.Wilson We have a serious situation here and would like you to look into it. Come with me". Peter nodded and followed her. They walked straight to their lab past the room marked "Dr.Ram Krishna". "Welcome to Siddhi Ms.Atkins and Mr.Wilson". Ms.Atkins always gave the freedom of naming the labs to those who were going to use them. At SRI, there were number of projects going on. Most of them were of highly technologically advanced. The researches were usually given private labs and they would take of the labs. There were number of projects going on inside the facility but all of them had the same goal "Artificial Intelligence".

"I still wonder why Dr.Krishna named this Siddhi. Do you know what does that mean?" asked Ms.Atkins 

"Yes. It's a Sanskrit word which means Supernormal Perpetual states, that is the state in which a human being procure a magical or spiritual power for the control of self, others and the forces of nature." 

"Interesting. But still why he names it by a word which describes spiritual power of self control is questionable". Peter nodded in agreement. They reached a broad metal door. Ms.Atkins placed her hand in the digital screen next to the door. The door opened into a bright room. That was Dr.Krishna's private lab. Peter has visited it only twice since he joined. Peter realized that there was something different now in the lab. There were number of new equipments on the left row and two new computers on the right row.  

There was a glass partition at the end and besides that there was a cot. 

Peter can instantly recognize that fragile old man lying in that cot. He was Dr.Rama Krishna.

Chapter 2

"What happened to Dr.Krishna" yelled Peter.  

"That's what we are trying to find out" replied Ms.Atkins 

"I guess it's something more than a sleep" 

"Last night I called Dr.Krishna but he didn't pick it up. I tried to reach him through mails. Then I decided to break his privacy and found him in this state" 

Dr.Krishna was looking like a child sleeping peacefully. "When he didn't wake up I called up our medics to check him. They concluded this morning that he was fine but was paralyzed." 

"Paralyzed!! Then why do you keep him here. You could very well take him to a hospital" exclaimed Peter. 

"No!! I am afraid there is something worse than that" 

"Please Ms.Atkins. Explain to me what is going on" 

"After our medics concluded that he was paralysed, I checked him with our Electroencephalography (EEG) for traces of brain waves. The results were positive. Then I went for our latest invention EfMRI and looked out for the blood flow patterns to his brain. I even studied his brain with Extended Positron emission tomography. These are the results." She handed a report to Peter. He was astounded; he never knew the institute possessed Extended Functional Magnetic Resonance imaging system (EfMRI).