Simulant Series ©

By Thomas Hartman, Copyrighted material published on-line by Symbiotic Publishing, August 2001, all rights reserved.

(Note this file is the Author's working draft. It will change and includes notes normally indicated as bullet points that will be expanded on in the finished book.)

 

 

Chapter One

 

Interview with the Simulant Creator

 

Dr. Robert “Bob” Thompson, the worlds leading computer scientist, has been compared favorably to Leonardo da Vinci as the new Renaissance man; a scientist, inventor and artist. There are those Luddites among us who hate what he has created and his few critics say he is just another overpaid computer programmer, but even his harshest critics have to admit that his programs create pseudo art, offer us hope in fighting disease, new farming techniques to feed the hungry and the list goes on. He has affected the world around us in so many ways that it would be impossible to gauge the effect that this one man has had

 

In June 2004 he was issued a patent for the world’s first environmentally aware computer model or simulation, commonly referred to as a “Simulant.” This clever bit of computer code lives out it’s sometimes millisecond lives span inside of every computer on the earth and in space today. It is in your oven, toaster, aircraft, and of course the network. We secured an exclusive interview with Dr. Thompson.

 

Journal: First, thank you Dr. Thompson for agreeing to this interview. We all know how jealousy you guard your time.

 

Bob: You’re welcome. Please call me, Bob.

 

Journal: What caused you to think of the idea of an environmentally aware simulation?

 

Bob: I’d love to take credit for it but simulations have been around for a very long time. In fact, computers were invented to simulate the world around us. The first computers were developed to mathematically predict the fall of an artillery round for the military. In the simplest terms, it was a simulation of how a round of artillery would behave when fired at a given angle with a given charge.

 

Journal: Of course your self-contained programs or Simulants as they are popularly called are much more complex than a simple mathematical model.

 

Bob: Of course, this has always been the challenge. While working at Holbert University my team and I were studying computer modeling and simulations, building on the long rich history. We searched for the Holy Grail of both artificial intelligence and simulations, which is, Awareness. By the way, I am not fond of the term Simulants, it is a marketer term, but just so we don’t confuse your readers we can use that term for these programs.

 

Journal: Sorry, so the key is Awareness?

 

Bob: Yes, awareness is what makes these programs work. If you looked at a simple simulation before we developed our program it was flawed, often fatally, because the simulation reacted in the way the programmer designed it to act. It really was more of a demonstration of an idea than a simulation. Our programs are simple but they have the abilities that model our own.

 

Journal: So what is the difference between a computer demonstration and a simulation?

 

Bob: Everything! In the late 20th century computer “simulations” of traffic were built. The typical example would be that the city planners of, lets say London, wanted to see what affect the automobiles entering the city each day had and minimize this effect. The problem is that the models might demonstrate a problem, but they did not simulate the problem. The first simple models placed cars in simulated London and with some crude artificial intelligence they would be programmed to move around the city. This didn’t come close to approximating real life. The cars would just randomly move along the streets.

 

The programmers would add in rules such, as 75% of the cars must enter between 7:30 am and 9:00 am. Each new problem would be solved with a new rule. In the end the program would accurately demonstrate a problem. In most cases it was a known problem such as there were too many cars trying to enter London between seven thirty and nine, but it never simulated the environment well enough to give us answers. Drivers react differently. Someone familiar with London acts differently than someone just driving down to visit.

The city planners could not even figure out where everyone parked their personal automobiles. On any given business day London had 25% fewer parking spaces than it had automobiles. Where were these automobiles stored? The programmers finally had to just give up and reduced the number of cars by 25% so that they could observe the traffic patterns. The real average traffic speed in London was around 9 miles an hour at the time but without removing the additional traffic load nothing moved in the simulation.

 

Journal: What use was it then if it was wrong?

 

Bob: It really wasn’t that useful as a simulation but it was immensely important to those of us who followed those early pioneers. We built on their work. In some cases, like the London traffic problem, we took their actual simulation and added our Simulants into it allowing them to interact with what really was just a random rules based simulation.

 

Journal: So the addition of Artificial Intelligence was the key?

 

Bob: Yes and No, a simulation would not work without artificial intelligence. What our company has done is to build the most complex environmentally aware program ever, but the environment itself has to provide the proper stimulus. The Simulants have to act intelligently, but there is much more to it. The program has to be environmentally aware, and the environment has to provide the correct stimulus.

 

Journal: I know you hate the label but “Self Aware?”

 

Bob: I really don’t hate the phrase self-aware. It is just not accurate. These programs must be self-contained but interactive; they must of course be self-aware but only because they must be environmentally aware. They must interact with the entire environment in a predictable and accurate way. In the London traffic model when we introduced our Simulants they would illegally park their cars. Under the old method we would have made a rule that either stopped this or we would have allowed it at a predicted rate. The key was how do you predict the rate of illegal parking? So we made the environment more complex by introducing Simulant traffic police with fines and clamps. Our Simulants learned how to maximize their use of illegal parking spaces while reducing the number of times that they were fined or clamped.

 

It is much more complex than I can describe but you see it every day in computer games and screen savers. The simulated man gets a promotion and stops using a very safe illegal parking space and rents a legal space. I have had more than one person complain to me that the game gets more boring as the player gets more resources. It doesn’t of course, but funny things like watching a player’s reaction to their car being clamped do disappear once there are enough resources and motivation to eliminate the issue. Our company makes what we like to refer to as the stupid pill program, which allows our Simulants to make bad choices. We developed it to simulate addictive behavior but is has been a huge revenue generator in the game market. People like to be smarter than their programs and let’s face it, we aren’t.

 

Journal: It is comments like that, that caused so much controversy.

 

Bob: Don’t I know it! These are simulations. I get very upset with my staff if they refer to any instance of our program as a “man” or “person.” We are Man. They are programs, simulations of Man but still just computer programs. They are of course smarter than we are in many ways. On the flip side we have never been able to get them to use more than 10% of their total memory and reasoning capacity at one time. We have created a very realistic model, of course it is electronic instead of chemically based as our own brain is. All real life is based on three types of interaction. The first is physical, the best example is how we move our muscles, they are attached to our bones and when they contract, we move. In Simulants we simulate the muscles and the bones so they move exactly like we do. The second is chemical, we release chemicals like insulin into our blood stream, and in Simulants we again simulate this so that the simulation has value. We can operate on a Simulant in the same way we operate on real Man. The last is electronic which in real life plays a very minor role but is the basis of Simulated life.

 

Journal: Doesn't that destroy the value of the simulation?

 

Bob: It does hurt the simulation. For example we are still unable to simulate many complex medical operations or treatments. An example would be that we can only carry out simulations into meditation techniques and disorders by translation. Simulants don't really use meditation like we do. They have what is called a dream state or dreaming. We built into the simulation a translation from this dream state to meditation, it is not perfect but works pretty well. It does also mean unfortunately that the Simulants have done a lot of work in areas that are useless in real life and sometimes concern us.

 

Journal: Concern you. Why?

 

Bob: They have developed methods of treatments based on the electronic nature of their existence. They have created devices that measure the current flow in pyramidal cells, the generation and the detection of an electric field. We were very excited when they first created a device called an Electroencephalography (EEG) machine. We use it today to test neural networks but it also concerned us. At first we thought that the Simulants would start to understand that they were not real. We assumed that they would understand that electricity does not play a major role in life, but of course it does in their simulated world. Plants, animals, everything that is alive in the simulation is made in the same way, of the same thing, and of course since we are doing this in a computer it has to be based on electrical activity. It amazed us when in a simulation they connected one of these EEG devices to a plant and then yelled, screamed, sang or killed something and the plant reacted. Of course it has to because in a simulation everything is interconnected, but real plants don't care if you kill a real shrimp, but in our simulated world they do. The Simulants have found how to measure and study this. Surprisingly they don't seem to be overly concerned about it.

 

Journal: Excuse me, simulated plants care if the Simulants kill simulated shrimp?

 

Bob: Yes, amazing isn't it. We tried everything to stop the experiments and we have suppressed the information where we can, but a Simulant hooked up one of these EEG machines to a plant and tested its reaction. Of course in real life a plant is a plant, so nothing would happen, but in a simulation a plant is made out of the same electronic pulses that all simulated life is made of, so it has a measurable electronic field. It is also carried on the same electronic circuits so you can measure the nuclear magnetic resonance of the circuits themselves. The experiment that concerned us the most was when the Simulant scientists hooked up the EEG to a plant and started to measure its reaction to different stimuli. It started to get silly, no real scientists would try singing or talking to a plant and measuring the reaction but of course in our simulated world there is a reaction, so the Simulant scientist were puzzled but continued to try new experiments. In one of the experiments she hooked up the EEG to the plant and then dropped live small crustaceans called fairy shrimp into boiling water. This of course cooked them and killed them. The EEG showed that the plant reacted to the death of the simulated fairy shrimp. The scientists went even farther, by dropping frozen fairy shrimp which of course were already dead and live shrimp into the boiling water. The plant reacted to the death of the live shrimp but there was no electronic reaction when a frozen shrimp was dropped into the boiling water.

 

Journal: So you built simulated plants to be sensitive to the simulated death of any other simulated life?

 

Bob: Not really, or at least we didn't try to build that kind of sensitivity into plants. It has something to do with the release of computing power when something is killed in the simulation. Even a fairy shrimp or a plant has to use some computing power so when it dies that computing power is released back to the network. The Simulant scientist was measuring this release as experienced electronically by the plant.

 

Journal: Does this happen in real life?

 

Bob: Of course not. Our atoms use electrical forces. But electricity plays almost no role in how we think or transmit information. Real life is based on chemical interaction, as you know it is how the neurons work in our brains. How we create connections that build memories but we still do not know enough to reproduce exactly the multiprocessing efficiencies that man has. We have been able to simulate all of the neurons in the brain and we have even been able to simulate the specific sequence of neuronal interaction but in Simulants we do this using electricity. It is still a very primitive representation of what Man is really capable of.

The advantage that they have is their brains are much faster. We think that the very simplicity of only using 10% of the capacity at one time makes them faster. They are also not restricted to linear thought, as we are. We can move the simulation at differing rates which allows information to flow to them at the maximum rate they are capable of processing. They live, reproduce and thrive in environments that I am sure Man would not be able to survive in, at least not without first running a simulation to determine survival strategies. We can of course allow all of the programs to die and restart the simulation with new programs and make changes to the environment.

 

Journal: You keep using the words die and killed. It is very hard to follow. This is a simulated fairy shrimp, plant or person we are talking about. Do they really die?

 

Bob: Of course, how accurate can a simulation be without consequences? I love to fly aircraft simulations and of course I do dangerous things like fly under bridges. Would I do it in real life? Of course not, even if I survived I would be locked up. You have to provide all of the inputs to make a simulation work, not just hunger, thirst, and pain. You need affection, friendship, personality, fear, intelligence, logic, motivation, environment, genetic traits and so on.

 

Journal: Genetic traits?

 

Bob: Yes we place genes in each program. It is a coding mechanism. These genes provide a great deal of information that is used by the program during its lifespan, and we have provided a mechanism where this code can be combined during renewal or birth of subsequent programs. It allows variation, some good, some bad, and some neutral. We are just mimicking what we see in sexual reproduction of animals.

 

Journal: Fascinating.

 

Bob: It is extremely important in our long-term simulations, global warming, planet colonization, and space travel. We don’t allow it in our short-term simulations because it introduces unrealistic or unnecessary aspects.

 

Journal: Let’s get back to death. How long does your average program live?

 

Bob: It depends on your definition. We of course create restore points either based on time or at key events. We use these restore points to create multiple instances of the program. Most simulations are really multiple simulations with multiple instances branching at decision points. Since we control time we can run thousands of scenarios in the time it takes Man to make a single critical decision. In our early work we loaded 1024 replicas of the same program into a combat aircraft management system. Each time a situation, either simulated or really occurred, 1024 possible scenarios were executed. Those with favorable outcomes were explored more fully and unfavorable ones were restarted from a restore point and tasked to try to optimize the favorable outcomes even more. This happens in milliseconds. The only noticeable problem, which we have not worked out, is that the programs experience a simulation phenomenon that they have defined as déjà vu.

 

Journal: I’m sorry. I have to ask you two questions now. How can the Simulants define something, and what is déjà vu?

 

Bob: Let me explain. Simulants communicate with us in the normal way: they talk, move, and enter data into our systems, all at computer speed. But some of their ideas are foreign to us and, of course, some of our concepts have not been entered into their simulated world so are foreign to them. We do not allow them to interact directly with us because it would destroy the simulation. If I thought I was a computer program controlled by an outside force, I would behave differently. There are also experiences in the simulation that do not exist in our world such as; we don’t die and then immediately restart at a restore point. In some cases simple Simulants like the one in your toaster were designed to always restart from a restore point. The toaster company puts a Simulant in the toaster to mimic your likes and dislikes based on smell which in a Stimulant’s case provides both the sense of smell and taste, along with temperature, color, and some other inputs that we have added over the years.

 

The key is the Simulant understands what you like. If you have ever used an antique toaster you would see that they were terrible. Bread would come out underdone while a waffle or pastry would come out burned. There is also a personal preference. I don’t know why people who lived together but liked things toasted by different amounts didn’t just go out and buy two of the things. But when we allowed the Simulant in the toaster to operate all the time it got, for the lack of a better word, bored. I use the toaster analogy because it was where we first discovered déjà vu. The idea was that your tastes change. Sometimes you like toast a bit more toasted, it often has something to do with the weather, cold, rain, but I am getting off the subject. We wanted to allow the Simulant to get input from you and measure the environment to simulate what you really wanted.

 

Journal: Sounds like a great idea and my toaster does seem to understand my moods.

 

Bob: Yes but the way we tried to do it by saving a new restore point at the end of the process caused us problems. We discovered this déjà vu phenomenon. The inputs from the Simulant indicated that it was aware in a vague sense that something wasn’t right. It reported back that it was aware of having already experienced something, which it was actually experiencing for the first time. It thought this was an illusion, which of course it wasn’t. The Simulant did not allow for the idea that it was repeating the same task over and over. First we decided to ignore it, we figured who really cares if a Simulant has a slightly uncomfortable feeling any way. I mean we do allow them to feel real pain from their point of view so déjà vu didn’t seem so bad. The only problem was if you let a Simulant experience déjà vu for a while it becomes so confused that it burns your toast while it is trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

 

Journal: You’re just making that up. I have never had a toaster burn my toast except as a college prank by my friends so it would activate the smoke alarms.

 

Bob: Nope they would do it, or at the very least your toast would take a lot longer to toast. We solved the problem by changing the simulation. The Simulant doesn’t believe that it is making toast at all. It believes it is working on the factory floor in the year 2005 making plastic parts. It is a very boring job but we got rid of the déjà vu and still allow it to learn that you don’t always like your toast cooked the exact same way. In power save mode we run a simple family simulation complete with simulated sick days. It is kind of funny the lengths that we go to just to be sure that you get bread toasted the way you like it.

 

Journal: How do you communicate with them? Get them to do whatever it is that you want?

 

Bob: Sorry my legal department would have a fit if I told you. You know the saying, “If I told you, I would have to kill you.”

 

Journal: How about you just tell me a little and rough me up a bit?

 

Bob: I can tell you a few things we do. We place other Simulants in the program that help direct the targeted Simulant to make the decision choices that we want. For example in our toaster simulation most of the Simulants don’t like working in a plastic plant. They are constantly looking for other jobs. We have made it very hard for them to find other work. If they apply for another position, we fill it with another Simulant and also make the interview process very painful. Some Simulants do leave the plastic plant because we have to allow them to exercise freewill or the simulation breaks down. So even in our simulated world, life is not perfect.

 

Journal: You said a few things. What other ways can you communicate with them?

 

Bob: We also created a state in which we can directly program them. We placed it in their rest period. The Simulants call it “Dreaming.” My former colleague Ann Dominique developed it and wrote a very interesting paper on it. If your readers want to better understand Simulant subconscious programming techniques and program interaction, I highly recommend reading it.

 

Journal: For those of us that would get lost reading a scientific paper, can you explain the concept?

 

Bob: Not as well as Ann would have, but the idea is simple enough. In real life we rest, which allows our bodies to recover from our daily activities and we meditate to reorganize our mental processes. The Simulants are models of us but we combine these two activities into one in them. They rest but during their rest they go into a subconscious state that they call dreaming. We can enter in this dream state without them being aware and place key ideas, thoughts, and motivations into their sub-routines. When they wake they act on these ideas.

 

It is very subtle and its effectiveness varies but it is one of our best tools when working with the Simulants. They often are confused about an important decision because we would like them to take one action and they would like to take another. We reprogram them in their sleep and they most often, but not always, decide to follow up on our implanted idea. It has become so common that the Simulants often use the phrase “Let me sleep on it.” The phrase still cracks my team up.

 

Journal: So our Simulants are an accurate representation of us?

 

Bob: Far from it, they are the best representation of us so far but we may never be able to really simulate Man. A former colleague of mine would have argued that we never should. They are a perfect balance between a good representation of us and a tuned environment. Let me give you an example, the simplest is they are color-blind. To overcome this we create an environment that provides them with all of the stimulation that they need in their range of vision.

 

Journal: Color blind, you mean they cannot see?

 

Bob: Kind of, it is very hard to explain. The first thing to understand is that a Simulant is a simplified representation of us. They look like us but their inputs are greatly simplified. Their vision, unlike ours, is tied to a single system. They can only see using their eyes and even their eyes are greatly simplified. They sense a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. While we can process everything in the electromagnetic spectrum that has a wavelength from 10-7 to 10-2 centimeters, they can only process an amazingly small segment of the spectrum. Simulants can only see the colors yellow and blue. We need them to believe they see the same colors as we do: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. What we define as indigo in real life, they define as ultraviolet in the simulation. What we call orange they call infrared.

 

It is important for the simulation to work that they think they see all of the colors we see. Stoplights have to be red, yellow and green but since we cannot program them with the ability to see all of the colors, we change the simulated environment to match their abilities. This means that a dull yellow light is perceived by a Simulant as a very bright red, and a cleaner yellow is perceived as very bright green. Color translation takes place everywhere in the simulation. The sky is blue in both the real world and in the simulation. But in their world the sky is really green since our blue is their violet. It normally takes one of our employees a couple of months to understand color translation correctly.

 

Since we don’t understand the concept of not seeing all of the colors, they often ask the question as you did, “Are Simulants blind?” The simple answer is no. They think they see exactly like we do, but we haven’t been able to program them to have our level of vision so we just translate colors for them. The concept is so hard to understand that we don’t even have a term for it in real life. We got the term color-blind from the Simulants themselves since some of them, because of genetic programming, cannot even see everything within their limited visible range.

 

Journal: I think you might be losing the reader, I know you have lost me. What other simplifications have you implemented?

 

Bob: Almost everything is simplified. They cannot feel or hear the differences between colors. We have allowed them to use only a single primary sense to understand the world around them. They see colors, feel physical shapes, hear sounds, and so on. The only success we have had so far in allowing them to process multiple inputs is their sense of taste. They taste primarily through smell but we have been able to provide them some additional rudimentary taste processing on their tongues. It is nowhere near as subtle as our sense of taste. They love things that are creamy, salty, and sweet. They also sense bitter and sour which they may or may not like.

 

Their food would be very boring for us. Also the things that we love they would find bland, vegetables, for example, are considered very bland by Simulants. They often cover them with fat or cook them in spices. Also most things taste the same to them, having more to do with texture than with what we would call taste. Surprisingly most meats taste like chicken to them and they often finish eating a meal without ever really knowing what it was that they ate.

 

Journal: So Bob, I am curious? If you don’t like the marketing term Simulant, what does your team call them around the office?

 

Bob: Actually we do call them Simulants, but in the beginning since we developed them at the University. We named them after the College, Holbert University Man. Funny enough the name stuck but only in the simulation. Now we have given up and we all call them Simulants. The marketing department hated the Holbert name so we never use it anymore. In the simulation they always refer to themselves using the abbreviation HU-Man. Sometimes they add the word race to the end. We assume it is due to the speed in which they develop.

 

They talk about themselves as human and the human race. They also have developed additional classifications for themselves. Males retain Man, while females are referred to as Woman. Also they have additional names for themselves based loosely on the geographical location of the simulation that they were created in. These names evolved over time and provide a constant source of amusement for the programmers.

 

Journal: Dr. Thompson it has been a pleasure interviewing you, and I am sure our readers will find your ideas as fascinating as your company and technology.

 

Bob: Thank you.

 

Chapter Two

 

Thompson Simulations Inc. Corporate Headquarters

 

Bob got back to the office around noon. The team asked him how the interview went “It was fine. Softball all the way, just like Mike told me it would be.” Bob didn’t mind talking with the normal press. It was the technology press that drove him crazy. They were like children, sometimes smarter than you thought and sometimes dumber than you thought and just as dangerous, because you never knew when they were going to be which. “Any way it should reduce our risk. I cannot believe that we are in this situation. We are more profitable than any company in history. We have contracts with every major corporation. We have no competition and from the looks of it we never will since even we cannot recreate a Simulant from scratch.

 

Thompson Simulations Inc. had one secret that only its board of Directors and Bob’s senior management team knew. Even though they could copy and create all of the Simulants that their customers would ever need or want, no one, not even Bob could create a new one. They needed a seed from an existing Simulant with all of the problems that this created. “We have to solve this problem. We can not keep copying and reprogramming Simulant 4129 even if it is the only Simulant that has the intelligence, reaction speed, aggression, and most importantly the compassion that we need for our most complex simulations.”

 

Bob looked frustrated and said; “I can not believe that I let that moron play God in the beginning before we fully understood what we had. Fucking Pete! I need to go over there and see what is happening with the military contract for the fly by wire system. I got a bunch of voice mails from the project managers saying they need us to staff up the project.” Bob had always respected Peter’s work but there was something a bit dishonest about him. He was brilliant but tended to take short cuts and to delegate the impossible to his staff while taking full credit for everyone’s success. He loved religion, every religion. He had spent tremendous amounts of time and resources studying the world’s religions and religious myths. This preoccupation with religion lead to Ann’s belief that he had a “God complex.” It got under Ann’s skin and had driven a wedge between her and Peter. Bob had to intervene and since he was especially fond of Ann he was often perceived as playing favorites by Peter.

 

Thompson Simulations Inc. Systems Interfaces Lab

 

Dr. Peter Johnson, General Manager of Simulant Systems Interfaces, looked around his newly equipped lab. It was a far cry from the cramped lab he had used when he had joined Bob and Ann years ago. He was positive that his research would make all of the difference in finding a way to gain some additional control over the Simulants. He was sure Bob thought the same way because he continued to fund his every request.

 

Peter often felt like he was the only member of the team that understood that while freewill was a critical component, the company needed to influence the Simulants long-term behavior. He had proven beyond any doubt that he could influence the Simulants by introducing myth and religious beliefs. While not all of the results were 100% positive and he had alienated Ann he felt that his contribution was the key to the company’s success. Ann was too timid, and her ethical concerns often got in the way of results. She was a typical liberal activist her views were correct and any opposing views were racist, extremist, dangerous or just plain stupid. She saw the world as simple and results predicable if only everyone finally came around to the obvious correct solution which of course was her solution.

 

Peter’s team was working on one of the company’s cash cows, military simulations. The team was running a simulation of the US Navy’s version of the Joint Strike Fighter. All Combat aircraft are designed to be fatally unstable; it allows them to have superior maneuverability. Pilots need to be able to radically change direction and a stable plane is a target, not a fighter. Since the very beginning aircraft designers have tried to balance stability against maneuverability. The introduction of sophisticated computers and “fly by wire” systems allowed them to remove the direct connection between the joystick, rudder pedals and the planes’ control surfaces. Pilots hated the idea; they wanted to know that when they pushed the stick over that they would be directly controlling the aircraft. “Fly by Wire” had become so common that all military and commercial aircraft rely on it.

 

Even automobiles started to use fly by wire in the late 20th century the first step was called anti-lock braking systems. The driver would push down on the brake and a computer would decide how much braking to apply so the car would stop in the minimum distance necessary. No matter how hard the driver pushed on the pedal the system would systematically release the brakes to avoid locking the tires and losing traction. The driver or the pilot was in control of the vehicle but they were only providing the input that told the computer what the operator wanted to have happen next. The computer would decide how to accomplish what the operator was requesting.

 

Thompson Simulation’s addition of Simulants was a quantum leap. The Simulants would directly control the inputs. They would fly the airplane still accepting inputs from the real pilot but they would sometimes override the pilot and in some situations they would take complete control of the aircraft. This happened during launch operations, pilot blackout, pilot confusion, overload, and critical injury. The Simulants were programmed to simulate a real pilot so they would not violate man’s real physical limitations.

 

A computer program in a modern jet could pull enough G’s to permanently incapacitate the real pilot. Simulants allowed the plane to recover without subjecting the pilot to additional risk. Simulant pilots are not restricted to a normal timescale so they can simulate a situation that may fail but still have time to recover. The introduction of multiple Simulants also allowed many choices to be made by the Simulants and the best outcome to be used by the pilot or aircraft. Simulants are not only used in production aircraft they are used in simulations of pre-production aircraft. This allows a manufactures to test their designs before going into production.

 

 

Chapter Three

 

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) somewhere in the Pacific Area of Operations

 

Lieutenant David Grant, United States Navy looked over his new Joint Strike Fighter. At $35 million dollars he still thought the Navy had gotten a bargain. It was fast, sleek, and sexy. It could carry 16,000 pounds of fuel and 17,000 pounds of payload anywhere within a 600 nautical mile radius off his ship. The deck was crowded with aircraft but since the Strike Fighter was the newest airplane in the fleet it was getting more then its fair share of looks from even this jaded crew. It might have been the newest but with all of the other aircraft moved topside for air operations it was still crammed in with the others. That meant that it was parked so the back half of the plane was hanging off the side of the ship. It always made him nervous because it meant he could not do a full walk around. He didn’t have a bunch of hours in this bird either since he had just finished the orientation flights required before going to sea with it.

 

He loved the bird but he knew it was going to move his pucker factor off the scale to launch this thing down the deck for the first time. It was a nightmare bringing it onboard but a launch always spooked him more. He wasn’t sure why but assumed it was because one hour and forty minutes after they shot you off the deck you had to bring it around to land on something that looked like a postage stamp. The other problem with these new birds was you had to keep your hands off the stick during take-off. The new fighters were built to fly themselves off the carrier. He hated being a passenger especially when he was pulling 3g’s and going from zero to 160 miles per hour in less than 3 seconds. He did his walk around or at least as much of a walk around as he could do with out stepping off the side of the ship. He climbed up into the cockpit.

 

The deck was a bit slick and the plane skidded a few times as he moved it over to the catapult. His heart raced each time the wheels skated across the few spots where the deck's protective coating had been worn away. This was definitely different than taxiing over to the big wide runway he launched from back in San Diego. Dave did his final checks, returned the plane directors’ salute, kicked his afterburners in and raised both of his hands so the “yellow shirt” could see them and waited. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Just as he launched off the deck he heard a low growl that he had never heard before and the plane started to do a quick barrel roll to the right. He grabbed for the stick and then realized that he needed to eject.

 

He let go of the stick and grabbed for the ejection handle. The barrel roll was slowing as he pulled the handle and felt the 12g kick of the rocket motors. He realized too late that with the aircraft almost inverted and pitched under the horizon 60 degrees his combined speed as he launched himself into the ocean was over 200 miles per hour. It didn’t matter that he was also just about to be run over by his own ship since he was dead as soon as he hit the ocean. It wouldn’t have matter if he hadn’t pulled the ejection handles. What was left of his plane was run over just 30 seconds later and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. His unusually fast reaction time had allowed him to eject from his fatally crippled aircraft, which allowed the Navy to recover his body and return it to his wife and family for a Christian burial.

 

Lieutenant David Grant did his walk around of his new US Navy Joint Strike Fighter, or at least as much of a walk around as he could do with out stepping off the side of the ship to inspect the back half of plane that hung over the side. He climbed up into the cockpit.

 

The deck was a bit slick and the plane skidded a few times as he jockey it over to the catapult. His heart raced each time the wheels skated across the few spots where the deck's protective coating had been worn away. This was definitely different than taxiing over to the big wide runway he launched from back in San Diego. David did his final checks, returned the yellow shirts’ salute, kicked his afterburners in and raised both of his hands so the plane director could see them, and waited.

 

As his head was pushed back in to the headrest he dropped his hands to the stick. He was too old and too good to let some computer fly him into the ocean, it was against all of the Navy’s flight rules and would have gotten him grounded if they caught him doing it, but he planned on getting older. So he gripped the stick like he was holding on to a baby chick but held it he did. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Just as he launched off the deck he heard a low growl that he had never heard before and the plane started to do a quick barrel roll to the right. He pulled the stick back to the left but the barrel roll continued. He looked as the nose pitched over and the sky was replaced by ocean.

 

David was about to pull the ejection handle but realized it would have just launched him straight into the ocean. He pulled the stick over in the opposite direction and the barrel roll sped up. It was like being back in a centrifuge. The moment he saw the sky again he let go of the stick and reached down between his legs and pulled up on the ejection handle. The barrel roll was slowing as he pulled the handle and felt the 12g kick of the rocket motors. He had the strongest sense of déjà vu he had ever had as he escaped from his stricken aircraft.

 

The seat stabilized and a funny thought crossed his mind, McDonnell Douglas was going to buy him dinner, because he had just raised their percentage of successful out of envelope ejections. The next thought was that he was about to get very wet. His crippled plane flew on for another 30 seconds and then smashed into the ocean. The Navy would try to recover it but the water was deep and the wreckage would drift down over a pretty big area. This was their newest fighter but the focus of the program had been affordability. They used off the shelf parts so no great secrets were slipping into the deep. David couldn’t help but think maybe affordability wasn’t the best goal to have when building high performance fighter aircraft, at least not the ones that he had to fly.

 

He bobbed in the ocean and waited for the rescue chopper to come fish him out and take him back to his ship. This was going to be a very long cruise, now that he had sent his assigned airplane into the ocean. The "Air Boss" frowned on all the paperwork that was required when one of their pilots lost his thirty-eight million-dollar aircraft. The ship continued to sail on and he felt very small in a very large ocean. He wasn’t worried that the rescue chopper would miss him, his radio was working, a dye packet colored the water around him, and his strobe light was happily blinking away.

 

He thought about the sense of déjà vu that he had during the ejection, it was shockingly strong especially since he had never ejected before and it was nothing like the training exercise. A wave washed over his shoulder and he felt a chill. He thought of his wife and two kids, his son would think it was too cool that he had ejected, but for his wife it would be one more reason to finish up this tour and get out of the Navy. She loved him but she hated the Navy. She hated the extended sea duty, and their friends that didn’t make it home. Even in peacetime flying jets off of carriers was a dangerous business. She wanted him to quit and fly for an airline. They could move back to Dallas and have a nice normal life. He was afraid he would die of boredom flying a bus with wings from Dallas to LA and back. There was nothing romantic or exciting about airline flying.

 

One of his classmates from the academy was flying jets for Airliner Alliance. He liked to joke, “I wish I got as much time off as my neighbor thinks, as much money as my parents think, and as much sex as my wife thinks.” They tell him that to fly a new modern jet you don’t need a pilot, co-pilot, and engineer - you just need a pilot and a dog. You need the pilot to feed the dog and the dog to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything. Another wave broke over his shoulder as he heard the sound of rotor blades. He tried to think of something witty to say to the rescue swimmer. He couldn’t come up with anything but with the sound of the helicopter overhead and all the splashing the swimmer wouldn’t have heard him anyway.

 

He recognized the swimmer. It was one of the guys he played poker with. He was a very hard guy to beat in poker but they got along like they were long lost brothers. He could almost tell you what the guy was thinking from across the room. It was nice to see a friendly face and he was glad it was almost over. It was amazing how cold the Pacific could get and the rotor wash didn’t help much. He was trying to look macho, like it was no big deal to toss away a jet every once and a while, but shivering in his wet flight suit took most of the bravado out of him on the short flight back to the carrier. Maybe a nice airline job wouldn’t be so bad. The swimmer slapped him on the back as they landed and gave him a friendly smile as David headed up to get his debriefing. He sprinted up the ladder to put on a good show for the crew who were all smiling and watching him. One more sailor returned from the sea.

 

Bob looked over Peter’s shoulder and said, “So what is the problem?” Peter explained that it was the simulation they were running for the military. There was something wrong with the design of the Military’s new Joint Strike Fighter. Bob asked why Pete cared. “We are not responsible for the jet’s design, we are just providing the Simulants for the “fly by wire” control systems.” Peter explained that it wasn’t the jet design the military was interested in this time. It was that one of the Simulants had survived when a system failure should have made it impossible to eject in time.

 

Peter had run the simulation a couple of thousand times and had not discovered the reason. The military was of course very interested. It wasn’t the Simulant that they had used. The military contract specifically required that they use their best Simulant. The military had paid the outrageous premium that was now required for its use. Bob suggested that they put some research Simulants in the program and let them investigate. He told Pete not to use another copy of the same Simulant since the military specified that they use the top Simulant so often that Bob was afraid that the Simulants would start to notice how alike all of their top achievers were.

 

The debriefing went as well as could be expected. The investigators asked David what the first indication was that something had failed and he told them about the low growl. They watched the video of this launch over and over. He was surprised to see the briefing room almost completely filled with company representative from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric. He didn’t remember hearing that a representative from each of the major contractors was going to be on this cruise. Boeing wasn’t even a sub-contractor on this version of the Joint Strike Fighter; they were assigned to the assist Lockheed Martin on the Marine Corps and Royal Navy version.

 

It was unbelievable that the Navy would have allowed so many civilian contractors on this deployment. They started off very supportive, “So Lieutenant are you OK?” “We are so glad you were able to punch out.” “I hope you understand we would like to get your impressions while they are fresh in your mind. We won’t be long.” “Can we get you some coffee or maybe something stronger?” “Do you mind if we call you, David?” But it quickly moved away from being a standard accident investigation to an interrogation of his actions.

 

They picked up on the different rates of rotation on the film. “Lieutenant your aircraft started to rotate to the right immediately after launch, the rotation slows, and then it accelerates. Why?” David noticed that they were back to Lieutenant and tried to brush off the question. He first told them everything happened so fast that he did not notice the differing rates. When he saw they were not buying it, he went on the defensive. “Look you guys built the thing. You guys programmed the hands free launch system. I was just along for the ride and ended up splashing down into the ocean because something is wrong with your jet. You guys crack me up, one of your jets flies itself into the ocean and it is pilot error. Look I was the pilot and I didn’t make an error. Your plane is broke, go fix it.” He turned to the Air boss and asked, “Sir are we done here?”

 

The Air boss looked around at the contractors, he couldn’t figure out how so many of them got on his ship either but if the Pentagon sent them and they went back complaining that they did not get the Navy’s full cooperation then someone was going to pay hell for it. The Contractors begged him with their eyes and he finally answered, “David lets get this over with. We watched the tape, we know it was an equipment fault but we need to let these guys do their job.” He handed him a coffee cup, and the smell of single malt scotch whiskey filled the room. US warships did not allow alcohol except for medical purposes. David didn’t need a drink because he had almost crashed into the sea, or because he floated along watching his ship sail on without him. He needed it to get through the next set of questions that the contractors were going to ask him. David took a long sip and sat back down. They started at the beginning, “So tell us again about the low growl, you think you heard.” David took another sip and repeated the entire story from the beginning.

 

They continued to focus on the rate of rotation. The Contractor from Lockheed Martin told him that the software would not have changed the rotation rate. “Lieutenant, the software would not have changed the rotation rate. In fact we have run this scenario through the computer thousands of times and under all conditions the plane would either continue to rotate at the same speed or the rotation would slow. Under no conditions would the plane’s rotation to the right accelerate.” David was surprised to hear that they had time to run thousands of simulations since his crash, but just shrugged his shoulders at the Lockheed guy. David took another sip of scotch, mostly because it seemed to annoy the Lockheed guy.

 

Back in the lab, Peter had a hunch and removed the requirement for the pilot to keep his hands off the stick then quickly ran the simulation a couple of hundred more times. 25% of the time the pilot survived. Their top Navy Simulant pilot had saved his simulated life by failing to follow Navy regulations.

 

David had another strong feeling of déjà vu. The taste of the scotch disappeared from his mouth and the Lockheed guy was speaking, “Lieutenant. The software would not have changed the rotation rate. In fact, we have run this scenario through the computer thousands of times under all conditions the plane would either continue to rotate at the same speed or the rotation would slow. Only one condition would cause the plane’s rotation to the right to accelerate. You pushed the stick over to the right!” David started to tell them he did not remember, but decided that flying a bus with wings didn’t sound so bad anymore. He thought FTN; it was a very popular abbreviation with the enlisted men. You find it scrawled somewhere on every ship, port, and navy bar in the world. For the very first time in his military career David thought, “Fuck The Navy.”

 

David pushed the coffee cup away, stood up, leaned in very close to the Lockheed guy and said, “You’re goddamn right I pushed the freaking stick to the right. I don’t know how the hell you ran thousands of simulations in the twenty minutes between when my plane ploughed into the ocean and you and your buddies walked into our briefing room, but I do know one thing. The pilot dies in every freaking one. Well sorry to disappoint you but I pushed the stick over and I ain’t dead. That is why we let real pilots fly airplanes because computers can’t.”

 

The debriefing lasted another four hours and ended with Lieutenant David Grant getting an official reprimand for failing to follow naval regulations and flight rules. It was not recorded in the reprimand that if he had followed flight rules he would have been listed as killed in the line of duty. It was the end of his navy career. He would never make Lieutenant Commander or become a squadron leader.

 

That night as he slept he had the strangest dream. He dreamt he was coming down a mountain driving a small herd of animals. He looked back and saw two peaks in the distance. The mountain held a strange collection of wild animals. He woke to the feeling that this was not the first time he had left his ship behind him. He didn’t sleep much more that night. He would be flying back to “the world” tomorrow and would be resigning his commission almost as soon as he touched down. His wife would be thrilled. Maybe his buddy could get him an interview with the airline.

 

Chapter Four

 

Holbert University 4 years earlier.

 

Professor Ann Dominique had discarded the virtual reality outfits that were so fashionable with some of her colleagues. She built her models completely inside the computer. She was not trying to build an interface to a computer model a model of man’s mind. She understood that man’s mind is much more that just his brain. Subjects will react to stimuli even when they are in a coma and their brain is non-responsive. The first simulation she mastered was to get a simulated limb to display triple flexion at the hip, knee, and ankle when she stimulated the sole of the foot. She was amazed when she also got dorsiflexion of the great toe. She left her lab and wanted to yell from the rooftops that she had gotten dorsiflexion even though she had not expected it in this model, but of course most people only looked at her like she was insane.

 

This was the problem she faced everyday. Her colleagues were all computer geeks trying to figure out how to remove a couple machine level instructions that did nothing, but were needed to allow something else to interact in their poorly written programs. They viewed the real world like it was some mathematical mistake not quite as interesting as the computer world. They had not studied human anatomy, psychology, or neurology. They played computer games, wrote clean elegant code and hoped that they could retire 10 years after they left the University.

 

Ann could not understand why they wasted so much time on improving things like “kerning” which some graduate student had explained to her, in mind-numbing detail, has something to do with the “portion of a letter which extends beyond its width, that is, the letter shapes that overhang the projection of a character beyond its sidebearings.” He had explained that he was being recruited for a job that paid 10 times the amount she was being paid as a university professor. It would allow him to focus on kerning problems but he was hoping to manage the kerning team so was holding out. She thought it sounded like some sort of sport played on ice with push brooms. Of course they all thought that she was a bit strange because she was an excellent computer programmer but she continued to attend and give lectures at the Holbert School of Medicine.

 

They respected medicine but didn’t believe it had enough economic value in the marketplace to really attract talent anymore. Ann continued to combine both computer science and real science. She had perfected her simulation of the bodies’ axon neurons. Most simulations programmers choose to ignore the thin layer of fat called myelin that ran around the longer axon nerves. Programmers would simply simulate the electrochemical input and then hard wire the cable like nerve, as if it really was just a cable. They built their systems to suit the computer rather than using the computer’s power to simulate the real system. That was why they never experienced the unexpected, like having a big toe move when the simulation was only built to simulate that the hip, knee and ankle should move when stimulated.

 

She used these simulated neurons for many sub-routines in her simulations. She built these automated sub-routines so they wouldn’t require interaction with the simulated brain that she had modeling after her own brain. She wanted to ensure that the brain did not have to be aware of things that it did not have to consciously control, such as breathing, heart rate, temperature control and so on. She not only built axons but created many specialized neurons for different tasks that mimicked the way our real bodies work. Receptors that could sense their environment, motor neurons to carry signals, and connectivity neurons that connected the receptors and motor neurons to the brain. She built monosynaptic pathways that carry simple messages so they would not have to involve the higher functions.

 

She used neural nets, which link neurons together and formed the building blocks for the centralized brain. She overcame one of the major problems of how to allow chemical communication to happen electronically, by using the work of Bob Thompson's team. His team had discovered a way to use electrical impulses transmitted across a simulated central nervous system.

 

She formed the mind into sub-components that mimic the design of her own brain map. She created a simulated spinal cord, the medulla, the pons, the midbrain which controls reflex and automatic functions such as digestion, blood pressure and so on. She then provided the simulation with a cortex so it could coordinate movements and react to the constantly changing simulated world. It also allowed the simulation to process information, coordinate memory, thought, and finally allowed for verbal communication.

 

The simulated brain operates electronically between 0 and 70 Hz. The frequency changes depending on the mental state, moving from Delta through Theta, Alpha, and finally ending at Beta. Delta would be when a Simulant is unconscious and relates to normal sleep in a real person. Theta is about 4 to 7 Hz when Simulants are aware but not fully conscious. The upper range of this stage and the lower range of Alpha is where meditation takes place in real people. Alpha in Simulants is referred as the dreaming state. Activity above 14 Hz is where the fully conscious mind operates in a Simulant.

 

This was when she first started to test how the simulation could be used as an interactive device. It did not work well in the beginning since it could talk but she had not given it anything interesting to talk about, yet. The programs lack of real world experiences reminded her of some of her programming students.

 

She had first met Bob after he had attended one of her lectures. He was they only computer geek to attend any medical lectures. They struck up a fast friendship and she felt comfortable talking to him about everything. He was more than intrigued to hear that she had surgically implanted an interface into her own body so that she could map the human mind. Bob had some ideas on how to create a simulated Hypothalamus and pituitary system to simulate hunger, sexual drive, aggression and pleasure.

 

They started to work together and were the perfect team. The attention to detail that they included in their simulations allowed them to create simulated life that could react to its environment almost exactly as a real person would. This allowed Bob to build much more realistic simulations. The problems in the past were that the programmer would have to anticipate all of the reasons or causes and effects that affected the simulation. With simulated people in the simulations anything that could happen did happen. The programs they created were almost as complex as a real person’s mind is and it allowed them to operate naturally.

 

Bob and Ann worked together at the University co-authoring many articles on simulations and medical modeling. Bob was growing tired of watching his students graduate and join successful companies or start their own. He decided it was time to cash in on all of the hard work that he and Ann had been doing. He wasn't sure how Ann would react to his proposal. She loved University life with its freedom to move from the interdisciplinary lab to the school of medicine. Working with her over the last couple months convinced him that now was the time. They had created a pretty good working model and if they didn't start working full time on the project it might never progress beyond the experimental phase.

 

Bob went to one of her lectures sitting in the back of the room sketching Ann. She was one of the best lecturers in the University. She was young, but when you considered that she had already completed her residency in Neurology from Edinburgh Medical School and her Clinical Fellowship from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders she was amazingly young. She received her Ph.D. degree from Basel University, and was voted by her students here at Holbert as one of the most beautiful females on campus. Her male students often underestimated how hard her class would be seeing her walking around campus. Her work on modeling of the cerebellum was groundbreaking and she was a great lecturer because she was passionate on every subject in her field.

 

Her research was as varied and complex as she was. She was heading the electrical engineering interdisciplinary laboratories as the senior medical and psychological faculty member on the team. She rose to that position for her work in developing models of brain function, natural motor control, modeling the nervous system, medical engineering, medical imaging, implantation of artificial circuits to correct loss of motor control, development of neuroprostheses and artificial intelligence systems design. She was the smartest person Bob had ever met and he knew that he needed her to join him in the new startup company he was planning.

 

He finished the sketch about the same time as she finished the lecture. He had also jotted down some notes to himself on the material she was covering. Bob was the best computer model designer in the world, but even he had a hard time keeping up with the information that was contained in Ann’s lecture. He stayed seated and waited as Ann’s students question her on the lecture. She walked up to where he was sitting and sat down beside him. She looked over the sketch and liked the way he had focused on her eyes. “So Bob, learn anything?”

 

He smiled and said, “I always do, in fact I was wondering? Why did you choose to use a finite-difference method to solve the variable-coefficient diffusion equation in three dimensions, under a parabolic approximation in which the downstream variable is time-like? I think you will have a hard time displaying graphically the various sheared wind-flow conditions.” Ann smiled, “You picked up on that while you were sketching?” “I like to multi-task, it gives me a chance to listen more closely.” “Bob, if I didn’t know you were happily married I would swear you where trying to turn me on.” He laughed and invited her out for a cup of tea.

 

They talked late into the night. Bob explained that he wanted to combine all of their work to start a new company focused on creating environmentally-aware programs. He needed her work and more importantly he needed her to complete the project. His goals were grandiose, which she like, but the rewards both from a financial and intellectual aspect would be incomprehensible, so the meeting did not last long into the night because Bob needed to convince her, it was to hold her back. She explained how Bob was mistaken in his design and told him how her work would add to the project.

 

Ann was currently mapping Man’s mind, she had created biotechnology that she had implanted in herself that allowed her to record and evaluate real-time information as she experienced it. It required all of the computer power that the technology lab had to offer and created reams of information that only she could fully understand. It was important that she was able to recreate the thoughts that she had while the data was being recorded. Most test subjects did not understand that the mind did not think in one dimension. As Bob had commented, he had sketched her while at the same time he was following her complex lecture. That is how people normally thought, they thought about many things at the same time.

 

Ann found that she could only interpret other people’s thoughts from the recorded data when they thought about something simple, like the combination to their lockers or a phone number. She could get even these simple thoughts wrong sometimes because the test subject would get them wrong in their minds. In one case she would ask a subject to think of their girlfriend or boyfriend’s phone number, Ann would record and analyze the result, and then ask them to dial the number, 4% of the time the person got the number wrong in their mind even though they could correctly dial it.

 

It was frustrating in the beginning because the 4% looked like a failure in the mind mapping even though the mind mapping was correct, but the subject was thinking of the wrong numbers. Ann was able to interpret her own thoughts and then work back any failure to discover if the data was wrong or if she was really recording data that Ann herself was not aware of. Ann’s mind was better mapped than any other mind in history. She had even been able to program a simulated Ann Dominique that was able to answer questions in the same way as she did.

 

She once used the program as her answering machine as a test. The callers were never aware that they had not reached Ann. If fact her own mother once talked to the program for over an hour. It wasn’t a fair test since most of the time a conversation with her mother was little more than an occasional, “Yes, mom you’re right. No, of course I would never do that. How’s Dad?” She finally had to stop doing it when a student who she found interesting called and got the completely wrong idea about how she felt when the uninhibited Ann Dominique program responded a bit too frankly to some inappropriate comments the student made. The program didn’t have to worry about tenure, but Ann did. Now with Bob’s proposal of starting a simulation company maybe she could call the student back and take him up on his offer.

 

Ann drove back to her apartment, she had a lot on her mind and she looked forward to looking at the mind map of her day. She would load the data into her lab computer and allow it to segment and store the information so she could analyze it later. She tossed her keys on the table near the front door. Her home, like the lab, had a wireless interface so she could connect to the lab from any room and move from room to room while she stayed connected. She needed to relax before she could start to download the data and then update the Simulated Ann Dominique.

 

The simulated Ann was becoming more complex everyday. Ann used it as an interface to the lab and talked to it as if it was her closest confidant. It was as opinionated as the real Ann was but it surprised her how often it would argue with her. It was more like a younger sister than an exact replica of Ann. It was more flirtatious than Ann as it had proven when answering the phone. It did not have a complete understanding of Ann's medical knowledge but it actually seemed a bit better at computers than she was. Ann would openly talk to it when she was working on a particularly difficult programming problem. She ran a warm bath and discussed her day with the simulated Ann. This was her normal routine; she would talk with the simulated Ann describing her thoughts and feelings and then start to download the data into the system.

 

It took about three hours to download all of the day’s data and by that time, she was ready to meditate before going to bed. She was so physically and mentally exhausted that she forgot to remove the link to her lab's computer. She leaned forward and slowly released herself and her mind. The computers in the lab went crazy; Ann had built multiple links to the system and had just updated a method for the computer to use her past memories as a kind of shorthand. If the computer saw she was accessing an existing memory it would place a pointer to that memory location and then continue to access newer data.

 

Ann had tried once before to map her mind during meditation but the computer could not record the data quickly enough so it distracted her and she was unable to meditate. Meditating was as important to people as dreaming would become to Simulants, if people couldn't organize their thoughts and make subconscious mental connections they would quickly be unable to cope with the conscious part of their day. Ann wasn't trying to see if she could mind map her meditation session again, she had just forgotten to disconnect the interface. What she didn't understand was that since she had been mind mapping for such a long time the computer had many more memories on file and was just able to keep up with the increase dataflow. She started by reorganizing today's thoughts which the computer was also trying to do at the same time. The program was improving its techniques because it was learning how to do it directly from Ann.

 

Ann then fantasized or dreamed as Simulants would later refer to the unconscious state that allowed all intelligent beings to organize their thoughts using fantasized images. She explored a hidden cove she had often visited during her meditation sessions. It was a warm and beautiful place, open to the sea, but the water was a surrealistic copper color. She could still clearly see the bottom of the cove through the copper colored water. She floated at the surface and then slowly swam to the bottom. The taste of the water was like warm sweet tea. She rested on the bottom with her long hair moving in the light current. She bent slightly at the knees and then pushed off from the bottom. She exploded through the surface of the water and rose up into the air. She flew through the trees just below the tree tops moving with a swimmers stroke through the air using a strong powerful overhead butterfly stroke. It propelled her forward and upward, the trees were now well below her, and the cove shimmered in the sunlight like a shiny new penny.

 

She moved faster and faster above the clouds, the earth below turned from green to brown and finally blue. The sky darkened as she moved above the sunlight. The North Star flickered in her peripheral vision and she turn over on her back to face it. She continued to rise until the night sky was filled with stars, and then she arched her back and brought her arms together. She pointed her hands back toward the earth and started her dive. The sky lightened as she aimed herself like a rocket at the hidden imagined cove. She spread out her arms and started a barrel roll about a mile above the water. At the last minute she put her arms back out in front of her and entered the warm copper water without a splash, she arched her back to miss the bottom and came back to consciousness.