Читать онлайн "Firefall [Omnibus edition of Blindsight and Echopraxia]" - Уоттс Питер - RuLit

Most of the psychoses, syndromes, and hallucinations described herein are real, and are described in detail by Metzinger,[20] Wegner,[21] and/or Sacks[22] (see also Sentience/Intelligence, below). Others (e.g. Grey Syndrome) have not yet made their way into the DSM[23]—truth be told, I invented a couple—but are nonetheless based on actual experimental evidence. Depending upon whom you believe, the judicious application of magnetic fields to the brain can provoke everything from religious rapture[24] to a sense of being abducted by aliens.[25] Transcranial magnetic stimulation can change mood, induce blindness,[26] or target the speech centers (making one unable to pronounce verbs, for example, while leaving the nouns unimpaired).[27] Memory and learning can be enhanced (or impaired), and the US Government is presently funding research into wearable TMS gear for—you guessed it—military purposes.[28]

Sometimes electrical stimulation of the brain induces “alien hand syndrome”—the involuntary movement of the body against the will of the “person” allegedly in control.[29] Other times it provokes equally involuntary movements, which subjects nonetheless insist they “chose” to perform despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.[30] Put all this together with the fact that the body begins to act before the brain even “decides” to move[31] (but see[32], [33]), and the whole concept of free will—despite the undeniable subjective feeling that it’s real—begins to look a teeny bit silly, even outside the influence of alien artefacts.

While electromagnetic stimulation is currently the most trendy approach to hacking the brain, it’s hardly the only one. Gross physical disturbances ranging from tumors[34] to tamping irons[35] can turn normal people into psychopaths and pedophiles (hence that new persona sprouting in Susan James’s head). Spirit possession and rapture can be induced through the sheer emotional bump-and-grind of religious rituals, using no invasive neurological tools at all (and not even necessarily any pharmacological ones).[36] People can even develop a sense of ownership of body parts that aren’t theirs, can be convinced that a rubber hand is their real one.[37] Vision trumps propioreception: a prop limb, subtly manipulated, is enough to convince us that we’re doing one thing while in fact we’re doing something else entirely[38], [39].

The latest tool in this arsenal is ultrasound: less invasive than electromagnetics, more precise than charismatic revival, it can be used to boot up brain activity[40] without any of those pesky electrodes or magnetic hairnets. In Blindsight it serves as a convenient back door to explain why Rorschach’s hallucinations persist even in the presence of Faraday shielding—but in the here and now, Sony has been renewing an annual patent for a machine which uses ultrasonics to implant “sensory experiences” directly into the brain.[41] They’re calling it an entertainment device with massive applications for online gaming. Uh huh. And if you can implant sights and sounds into someone’s head from a distance, why not implant political beliefs and the irresistable desire for a certain brand of beer while you’re at it?

ARE WE THERE YET?

The “telematter” drive that gets our characters to the story is based on teleportation studies reported in Nature,[42] Science,[43], [44] Physical Review Letters,[45] and (more recently) everyone and their dog.[46] The idea of transmitting antimatter specs as a fuel template is, so far as I know, all mine. To derive plausible guesses for Theseus’s fuel mass, accelleration, and travel time I resorted to The Relativistic Rocket,[47] maintained by the mathematical physicist John Baez at UC Riverside. Theseus’ use of magnetic fields as radiation shielding is based on research out of MIT.[48] I parked the (solar powered) Icarus Array right next to the sun because the production of antimatter is likely to remain an extremely energy-expensive process for the near future.[49], [50]

The undead state in which Theseus carries her crew is, of course, another iteration of the venerable suspended animation riff (although I’d like to think I’ve broken new ground by invoking vampire physiology as the mechanism). Two recent studies have put the prospect of induced hibernation closer to realization. Blackstone et al. have induced hibernation in mice by the astonishingly-simple expedient of exposing them to hydrogen sulfide;[51] this gums up their cellular machinery enough to reduce metabolism by 90%. More dramatically (and invasively), researchers at Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in Pittsburgh claim[52] to have resurrected a dog three hours after clinical death, via a technique in which the animal’s blood supply was replaced by an ice-cold saline solution.[53] Of these techniques, the first is probably closer to what I envisioned, although I’d finished the first draft before either headline broke. I considered rejigging my crypt scenes to include mention of hydrogen sulfide, but ultimately decided that fart jokes would have ruined the mood.

THE GAME BOARD

Blindsight describes Big Ben as an “Oasa Emitter”. Officially there’s no such label, but Yumiko Oasa has reported finding hitherto-undocumented infrared emitters[54], [55] (dimmer than brown dwarves, but possibly more common[56], [57]) ranging in mass from three to thirteen Jovian masses. My story needed something relatively local, large enough to sustain a superJovian magnetic field, but small and dim enough to plausibly avoid discovery for the next seventy or eighty years. Oasa’s emitters suit my needs reasonably well (notwithstanding some evident skepticism over whether they actually exist[58]).