"But the cerebellum also is a terminus," Prudence said.
"Cerebral output to the cerebellum doesn't even stop when you're asleep," Flattery said. "How can you -"
"So the cerebellum soaks up energy like an infinite sponge," Bickel said. "Energy is always pouring into it - emotional, sensory, motor, and mental energy. Why do we blandly assume the cerebellum engages in no activity? You can't find that anywhere else in nature or in devices made by man - where a system as complicated as this just sits there and does nothing."
"You're arguing that the cerebellum is the seat of consciousness?" Flattery asked.
"And you haven't defined consciousness," Prudence said. She kept her attention fixed on Bickel, hiding her excitement. His argument wasn't new, but she sensed he had a clearer understanding of where he was going with it then ever before.
"Seat of consciousness? No! I'm arguing that the cerebellum could mediate consciousness, integrate it, balance it... and that consciousness is a field phenomenon growing out of three or more lines of energy. We are more than our ideas."
"Prue's right," Flattery said. "You're not defining it." He glanced at Prudence, aware of her excitement and resenting it. Knowing the source of his resentment gave little solace.
"But I can come at it through the back door," Bickel said.
"What it's not," Prudence said.
"Right!" Bickel said. "It's not introspection, not sensing, feeling, or thinking. These are all physiological functions. Machines can do all these things and still not be conscious. What we're hunting is a third-order phenomenon...elationship, not a thing. It's not synonymous with awareness. It's neither subjective nor objective. It's a relationship."
"We're more than our ideas," Prudence said.
"There's the answer to the UMB's glorified adding machines," Bickel said. "It's what I kept telling them... about this undefined human consciousness. When you add the inputs as a series in time you don't always get an answer corresponding to the outputs. And since it isn't addition, it has to be a more sophisticated mathematical problem."
Timberlake, listening to Bickel, could feel the fitness intuitively. Bickel was going in the right direction, even though the landscape around them was fuzzy. We're more than our ideas.
Prudence leaned back, weighing Bickel's words. He had to be given free rein, that was the directive. But he also had to feel he was being obstructed. Sensing that she had let herself get too close to the problem, she forced anger into her voice: "Damn it to hell, you still haven't defined it!"
"We may never define it," Bickel said. "But that doesn't mean we can't reproduce it."
"You want to start mocking up a prototype to test your theories?" Flattery asked.
"Using our communications AAT system as a basis," Bickel said.
"The AAT is linked directly to the computer core," Flattery said. "It's part of the translation master program. If you make a mistake, you destroy the heart of the computer. I'm not sure we should -"
"It'll be securely fused," Bickel said. "No chance of a backlash getting through to -"
"Without the computer, our automatics cease functioning," Timberlake said. "Maybe we'd better reconsider. If -"
"Come off of that, Tim!" Bickel protested. "You could set up this safety system as well as I could. There's not a chance of anything getting through to the -"
"I keep thinking of the UMB's so-called thinking machines," Timberlake said. "We can't see all their behavior. If we miss one linkage we could upset a vital master program."
"We're just not going to miss any linkages. The schematics are all available. This isn't flying blind. The AAT is the only thing we could really foul up, and at this distance from Moonbase it's of dubious value."
Does he want to cut us off from the UMB? Flattery wondered. They suggested he might try it. We can't let him do that.
"If you demolished the AAT system," Flattery said, "how long would it take to restore communications?"
"Fifteen to twenty hours," Bickel said. "We could have a jury rig doing the job by then."
Flattery looked questioningly at Timberlake.
"That's about right," Timberlake agreed.
"We use the AAT as a basis for our simulator," Bickel said. "We'll raid colony stores for reels of neuron fiber, Eng multipliers, and the other basic components. What we have to get is a system that simulates human nerve-net function."
"But will it be conscious?" Flattery asked.
"All we can do is cut and try," Bickel said. "Our computer and even the AAT work on analogue additive principles. We're going to build a system that's strictly infinite-multiplying. Our system will produce message units that are products of many multipliers."
"You make it sound so simple," Prudence said. "Connect net A to net B at points D and D prime and you get the Consciousness Factor - CF for short."
Bickel's lips thinned. "You have a better plan?"
Did I push too hard? she wondered. And she spoke quickly, "Oh, I'm with you, Bickel. You obviously know all the answers."
"I don't know all the answers," Bickel growled, "but I'm not going to sit out here moaning about fate... and I'm not turning back."
What if we have to turn back? Flattery wondered. What do we do about Bickel's inhibition then?
"Are you going to wait for Moonbase to answer?" Flattery asked.
Bickel glanced at Prudence. "I'd prefer starting at once, but that means I'd miss my shift on the board... and since I'll need Tim -"
"We can handle it," Flattery said. "Everything seems to be running smoothly."
Prudence looked up at the big board and the inactive repeaters over her couch, wondering at her sudden feeling of chill. I'm afraid to take that board, she thought.
Those thousands of lives down in the hyb tanks... all depending on right-the-first-time reactions. Did the UMB big-domes really know what they were doing when they sent us out here? Was this the only way? Should we dehyb more people to help us? But that would overload several systems... including the Bickel system.
CHAPTER 10
The Chase has fascinated humankind from the beginning, and with good reason. What many failed to understand, however, was that there could be the excitement of the chase even where the only thing you were chasing was an idea, a concept, a theory. As awareness developed, it became apparent that this was the most important chase of all, the one upon whose outcome all of humankind survives or fails.
THE CREAKING OF their action couches, the click-click of relays - all of the subtle and familiar sounds of Com-central worried at the edges of Prudence's awareness.
For the past half-hour, Bickel had been fussing through the schematics, plotting his way into the computer, sharing parts of his plan with the others. She had come to dislike the sound of the schematics being shuffled.
There were tensions here that she did not fully understand, but her own role remained clear - mediate and goad... mediate and goad.
The common stench of Com-central carried an acridity which she identified as fear.
We have a chance at glory, she told herself. Very few people ever have that opportunity.
It was an empty pep talk, forever confronted by that inescapable fact:
I am not people.
For the first time since coming out of the hyb tank, she felt the old familiar pain-of-wonder, asking herself what it might have been like to have been born into a normal family in the normal way, to have grown up in the noisy, intimate belonging of the unchosen.
"You are the cream, the select few," Morgan Hempstead and his cohorts had kept reminding them. But they all knew where the cream had originated. Normal biopsy tissue from a living human volunteer had been suspended in an axolotl tank, the genetic imprint triggered and the flesh allowed to grow. It produced an identical twin - an expendable twin.