"The human desire to know why is as powerful as the desire to know what happened next, and it is a desire of a higher order. Once we have the facts, we inevitably look for the links between them, and only when we find such links are we satisfied that we "understand""
"The imagination must come first. The machine will follow,"
-Janet Burroway
Prologue
Undisclosed Hospital-November 1, 2008
Eliza awoke strapped to an inclined bed, with wires of an EEG connected to her head like the flyer she saw for Terminal Man the night she met Hans for the showing of the movie in Weiner Hall. The technology was not as advanced as Hans made it out to be. She wondered how it was all done remotely when she was in Paris. The bed lowered and Eliza was guided into a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine (fMRI). Eliza turned her head and she could see Hans waiting behind a shield of glass in the next room staring into a computer monitor. Eliza tried to shake herself loose.
"Hans!”
Hans grabbed a microphone, pressed a red button and held it down. He turned to a technician.
“Begin her sequence.”
“Hans!”
“Eliza, stay calm.”
“What’s going on?”
“We need you to relax. Just listen to me.”
“What are you doing to me?”
“Can you remember what happened yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Where were we?”
“In Paris .”
“What were you doing there?”
“Getting something.”
“Do you now what?”
“No.”
“Eliza, I want you to remember the IEEE conference. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what happened yesterday?”
“I went to the conference and took a program.”
“Good. Then what happened.”
Eliza tried to lift her hand then shook her head.
“My head hurts.”
“Try to remember yesterday.”
“Um. I was on stage. I think I was singing Blue Moon. Everyone’s clapping.”
Hans looked at the computer monitor. A blinking cursor glided across the screen and spelled out:
BARACK OBAMA United States President 2008.”
“We got it! Get her out of there.”
“The sequence is not complete,” interrupted the technician, “There’s more.”
“What do you mean more?”
“The sequence is not over.”
“How much more?”
“Five seconds worth.”
Hans watched the cursor as it jumped to the next line on the monitor and printed:
“DONALD J. TRUMP United States President 2016.”
The above is the Prologue to the untitled sequel to Cyber-Eugenics: The Neural Code. Would you like to read more?
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