Patrick raised a hand in front of the test pilot, and James slapped a metallic-lined glove into it. “Punch a hole in the sky, buddy. That’s an order, too.” He gave James one last thumbs-up and stepped off the lift.
By the time Patrick had stepped back onto the tarmac Dr. Carmichael was shaking his head in disbelief.
“He’s already under alpha-C parameters. I think he’s getting to the point where he can do it anytime. If we had him hooked up outside the plane, he could probably go into theta-sine A before we strap him in.”
“He gets nervous every now and then,” Patrick added, “especially before a big test like this one. Back me up on monitoring him, Alan.”
An external power cart was running on Cheetah by the time Patrick returned, climbed into the aft cockpit and strapped in. Aircraft power was already on, and his crew chief and test-range officers had already done a fast preflight of the telemetry and data collection instruments packed into the cockpit. Because Cheetah was the only jet around that could even try to keep up with the DreamStar, it was now used to fly photo-chase on training and test flights. The special high-speed camera Cheetah carried tracked DreamStar as it went through its paces. Patrick could monitor all of DreamStar’s important electronic indications and if necessary take control of the plane by remote control.
With all of DreamStar’s power off, however, there was only one readout to monitor — the EEG of Ken James himself. Like Carmichael, Patrick was amazed as he watched the electronic traces of James’ different brainwave patterns. He clicked open his interphone.
“He’s almost into theta-sine alpha already.”
“Does that mean I can go to sleep too?” J. C. Powell said.
“How fast could you go into theta-alpha?” Patrick said, watching the readouts change. “I know you’ve flown the DreamStar simulator. Could you do any better?”
“Patrick, I’m a pilot, not a robot.” J.C.’s voice had lost its sardonic tone. “Seems to me ANTARES turns pilots into near-robots. But to answer your question: sure, I could go into theta-sine-alpha quickly. Couple of minutes. Staying in theta-alpha was another trick. I could never quite get the hang of it. But I didn’t lose DreamStar, I gained Cheetah. I figure I got the better deal”
Which was a long speech for J. C. Powell; it underscored his dislike for ANTARES. ANTARES might be the great addition to DreamStar’s already amazing array of avionics, it might be the future of air combat — but J. C. Powell didn’t see it in his future.
“It doesn’t turn anyone into a robot,” Patrick said. “You still have full control. I don’t see what your problem is about AN-TARES.”
“Full control? Of what? A computer tells him what to do, and he does it.”
“It’s still the pilot calling the shots, J.C.”
“Sure, he can pick up his own options out of a list the computer presents to him, or he can override everything and go his own way. I know that. But if a smart computer offers up a list of a hundred options, well, most guys will pick something out of that list.” Powell spread his hands out across his lap. “Say you’re at a fancy restaurant.” He motioned an imaginary waiter to his table. “You’ve been to this restaurant before because they have the best steak in town, but Pierre hands you the menu. What do you do?” Powell opened his imaginary menu and pretended to read it. “You look at the menu. Why? Because it’s there. So maybe you order the steak because that’s what you always order, but you still look at the menu.
“See, even with ANTARES it takes time to scan the menu. A real pilot will use that time to use his head and instincts to execute a real maneuver. In ANTARES there’s no thought, analysis, decision making … it’s been done for you. And I call that programming.”
“But if it results in a better system?”
“ANTARES hasn’t been proved to be better than a human pilot …”
“We still use a human pilot, J.C.”
“More or less, I guess,” Powell said sarcastically, returning switches to their proper positions. “But in a significant way we don’t — I say ANTARES can be beat.”
“Well,” Patrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily, trying to massage away the headache that usually happened when arguing with J. C. Powell, “it’s a moot point, at least for now. Like I said, we’re not concerned with how well DreamStar fights, deploying her is still a ways off. We’re here to test the aircraft and test the concept.”
J.C., slumping so far down in his seat Patrick couldn’t see him, said, “But all those generals and congressmen don’t care about testing the concept. They all want to know the same thing — can she win dogfights?”
“And you’re saying she can’t.”
“I’m saying that she can be beat. A pilot with the right combo of skill and balls can beat ANTARES. And if ANTARES is forced out of the combat loop, the pilot in DreamStar has to be able to take charge and fight on his own. DreamStar’s not really set up for pilot-directed dogfighting. For me that’s her weakness … And look what we’re doing to our combat pilots”—J.C. motioned toward DreamStar—”Ken James is one of the best pilots in the Air Force. He’s been a star ever since he graduated from the Zoo. So what have we done with him? We’ve trussed him up in a steel flight suit, a twenty-pound helmet and more damn electrodes than Frankenstein’s monster. We’re using his brain but not his mind. There’s a big difference, I figure. Are all our best military pilots going to be used as protoplasmic circuit boards for ANTARES?”
For a guy that was only thirty years old, Powell could be a real stick-in-the-mud sometimes. Patrick scanned the EEG readouts. “Everything looks normal. It should be awhile before he radios in that he’s ready. I’ll let you know when he’s coming around so we can crank engines.”
“Roger that. I’m gonna do another flight-control check.”
“Didn’t you just do a computer self-test?”
“Having a computer check a computer to see if a computer is working is just looking for trouble. One of these days all those computers will get together and drive us into the ground. I wanna catch them before they do it. I’m doing the check manually. Let me know when you’re ready to go.”
“Rog.” Patrick was tired of arguing. Besides, J.C. had a point. He turned again to the EEG monitors.
Theta-sine-alpha indicated that James was relaxed, but it was a much deeper level of relaxation, more neurological, much more than ordinary muscle relaxation. The ability to get to theta-sine-alpha had taken months of training. They called it biofeedback when psychologists would hook a patient up to a mini-EEG or polygraph that would beep whenever a beta wave would be detected, indicating stress or irregular muscular or nervous activity. The idea was to relax the body or control nerve activity until the beeping stopped. James had to go far beyond such muscle relaxation — he had to relax his mind, open it, create a window into the subconscious.
For Kenneth Francis James, the window to his mind did not open like a door or a window — it opened like a hot, rusty knife ripping through pink flesh. But that was the nature of the Advanced Neural Transfer and Response System that linked the brain with a digital computer. James had gone far beyond Carmichael’s lectures. This was the real thing, the link-up between the computer on the plane and his suit.
The first mind-numbing phase of transition was activation of the system itself, which occurred automatically once ANTARES detected that James had entered theta-sine-alpha. In order to pick up the tiny changes in electrical activity in James’ body, the metallic ANTARES flight suit itself had to be electrified. Even though the charge was very small’ it was applied to almost every part of the body, from the skull to the feet; it was like touching one’s tongue to the terminals of a nine-volt battery and feeling the tiny current jolt the taste buds, except that James felt that sweet, tingling sensation in every part of his body. And through it all, he had to maintain theta-alpha …