Nothing happens.
I count to twenty and say, “I don’t feel anything.”
“Well, yeah,” Ada says. “What did you expect to feel, exactly?”
“Smarter,” I mutter, feeling like maybe the intellect boost went in the opposite direction. “Or at least something.”
“I told you, your brain needs to adjust to this new state of being,” Ada says. “The effects are subtle at first. Even as early as the second day, I did better on a slew of cognitive ability tests, even though I felt the same, aside from a certain sharpness that’s hard to describe. The only noticeable thing was those weird pre-cog moments I had in the beginning.”
“Pre-cog moments?” I frown at her. “As in, psychic?”
“No, but sort of. It was very strange.” She chews on her lower lip. “It’s like a vivid daydream or hallucination. You see what’s about to happen.” I look at her incredulously, so she clarifies, “I don’t mean literally. The vision can easily be inaccurate. It’s a side effect of the not-yet-integrated portions of the simulated brain regions anticipating the result of a decision or action but serving the information to your normal brain too quickly. Thanks to neuroplasticity, they later learn how to work together, so don’t worry. It took a day or so before I stopped having these episodes, and since then, I suppose I’ve simply made better decisions, so no visions required.”
“Still sounds strange,” I say. “Are you sure you didn’t eat too many magic mushrooms or peyote?”
“The effects of mescaline and psilocybin are very different from what I’m talking about,” Ada says without blinking. “If you think about the brain’s primary function in nature, this phenomenon isn’t that odd. The brain tries to predict what’s about to happen in its environment. If bushes rustle, the brain might predict a lion is lurking behind them and send the rest of the body into a fight-or-flight response. This is similar, only it’s the new brain regions that are shouting ‘lion,’ and since your regular brain isn’t used to it, it shows you a quick dream of a lion as a way to cope with the new experience. That’s my theory, anyway.”
“Having done neither of those drugs, I’ll take your word for it.” The nagging aches throughout my body and my overall tiredness make it hard to hide the hint of irritation in my voice as I add, “But this would’ve been great information to have before I enabled this thing in my brain.”
“I didn’t think it would matter.” Ada takes a tiny step back. “It went away for me, and you can disable the whole thing at any moment.”
I instantly feel bad for putting her on the defensive. “Sorry if that sounded accusatory.” I blow out a breath. “I’ve had a long day.”
“It’s not a problem,” she says, though I can tell she’s still miffed.
“How can I make this process go smoother?” I ask, knowing that letting Ada geek out might improve her mood.
I was spot on with my question. Her bad mood forgotten, Ada rattles out, “My advice is to put a load on your brain. The bigger, the better. Double your reading material, check out those startup financials or whatever it is you do as a venture capitalist. Try your hand at programming again. You can create your own apps that’ll run inside your head, and my IDE will make coding easy, even for a noob like you. At the very least, use games like Brain Age; they stimulate all sorts of brain regions and help you see your progress as you go. My Brain Age is 20, which is very good. Take IQ tests or the SATs and the GRE test repeatedly, and you’ll see daily gains, for whatever that’s worth. In general, any new intellectual pursuit is a good idea.”
“Got it. I’d say I’m covered for a while, since just playing with this new toy in my head should keep my brain stimulated on multiple levels.”
“You’re one hundred percent right,” Ada says. “To that end, I advise you to start getting rid of your reliance on the keyboard and controller.”
“Sure,” I say. “What do I do?”
Ada sets things up for me to learn how to use my mind instead of the keyboard. The protocol is identical to what the people in the study were doing yesterday, but because I can type around a hundred words per minute, the process is quicker and easier for me. I start by typing out predetermined text while the Brainocytes keep an eye on what happens in my brain. Afterwards, using the same text, I mime typing in the air, and the Brainocytes report to Ada an extremely high degree of correlation between “real” and “mimed” typing. I progress to needing less and less physical involvement and eventually just mentally pretend to type. Again, the Brainocytes prove something neuroscience has known for a while: many regions of the brain that activate during regular typing still activate when I mentally type. It’s a lot like how athletes can mentally run through their exercises and achieve actual gains.
When I can type by thought alone, I picture what this aspect of the technology will do for people with disabilities and swell with pride at being a small part of it.
Dealing with the controller is even easier since I’m more proficient at video games than I am at typing. Ada isn’t surprised and jokes that our generation of gamers might actually have a large portion of our brain dedicated to video game controllers.
“You know, it’s possible,” I say and mentally bring up the email app. “I read about neuroscience experiments that found the brains of pianists were noticeably different from the average person’s.”
“Anything you do changes your brain.” Ada yawns the most contagious yawn ever and adds, “But yeah, very absorbing and challenging activities have an even bigger impact, and video games can certainly be that.”
Unable to suppress my retaliatory yawn, I use the email client window hovering in front of my face to mentally type out an email to Ada, writing, “So is this that technologically enabled telepathy you spoke about?”
She looks distant for a moment, then gives me the widest grin I’ve ever seen.
In utter silence, I hear a ding in my head and check my email, finding an email response from Ada that says, “Exactly.”
“The only issue is that the NSA can, in this case, intercept our thoughts,” I joke out loud.
“Sure, having part of your thinking in the cloud could indeed expose your private thoughts to the NSA. That’s a potential worry if you’re the paranoid type,” Ada says. “I say we can cross that bridge later, probably by using heavier encryption.”
A text message arrives in my head in the form of a jumping green sphere with a little text balloon icon next to it. I mentally click on it, and the message reads, “I prefer using texting for telepathy rather than email, if you don’t mind.”
I notice Ada sometimes closes her eyes when she works with her version of AROS. For some reason, that makes her look even cuter, which I didn’t think was possible.
Closing my eyes is a great idea, so I do it as I play with my mental apps for a few minutes. What I end up experiencing is icons hanging in the darkness without the distraction of the surrounding room. It’s definitely a good way to use the system, but having my eyes closed has one big flaw: I instantly feel the weight of the crazy day press against my eyelids, and another yawn creeps up on me.
“Okay, I’ll take that as a hint that you want to go to sleep,” Ada says through yet another yawn. “I can’t blame you.”
“Let me call a cab,” I say, opening my eyes and glancing around uncomfortably.
“Nonsense,” Ada says. “You should stay here.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to impose on you.”
I’m deathly tired, so I was actually fishing for her to extend this exact offer, but now that she has, I find myself wondering what it means, if anything. Besides, where would I sleep? Her apartment is big, but—
“There’s a couch in the library room,” Ada says, and for a moment, I get the creepy feeling that the Brainocytes somehow let her glimpse my private thoughts.
“That’ll work,” I say, perhaps a tad too quickly. “Thank you.”
The adrenaline that was covering up the pain from my injuries must be fully out of my system, because my shoulder’s killing me and my legs feel so wooden I can barely stand. I contemplate taking pain pills but decide that might make me miss the alarm Ada set up for Mom’s locator app. I just hope I can fall asleep as is.
“Alternatively, you can take my bed and I’ll take the couch,” Ada says, playing the role of mind reader once more.
“No.” I step toward her. “I can’t let you do that. I’ll take the couch.”
“I fall asleep on it with a book all the time,” Ada says, looking up at me. “You’re what, six-one, six-two? You probably won’t even fit on the couch without having to fold your legs under you.”
“Can you show it to me?” I shift from foot to foot. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”
She leads me into the library, and I realize she might’ve actually downplayed how unsuitable this sleeping arrangement is. The so-called couch is a glorified loveseat. Even with her barely above five-foot petite frame, she might feel cramped on it.
“It’s fine,” I fib and try to hide my disappointment by looking at the rows of books in the room. The subject matter varies greatly. There’s a big philosophy of science tome on the shelf to my right, and adjacent to it are a bunch of science fiction novels that I’ve either read or always meant to. A row of computer science books sits below that. Sadly, I’ve read these or similar ones before. I have a flashback to the college years I’ll never get back as I glimpse exciting titles like Design and Analysis of Algorithms and Data Structures and Other Objects. I chuckle when I spot the Introduction to Ada textbook, a volume that teaches Ada’s namesake’s programming language—not how to pick her up.
Ada doesn’t buy my lie or my avoidance strategy of looking at her books. She waits until I catch her gaze and softly says, “Neither of us has to sleep on this torture device if you promise to be a gentleman.”
Stunned, I notice her eyes are the same translucent smoky brown as the thousand-dollar cognac bottle I have sitting in my bar at home. I stare into them for a few moments before I remember she’s waiting for a coherent response. “I can pretend to be a gentleman, sure.”
She smiles, steps closer, and brushes the backs of her fingers over the extra swollen side of my face. “You poor thing.”
I catch her hand and hold it. It’s small in my hand and almost painfully warm against my battered face.
Ada waits a couple of beats, then steps out of my reach, pulling her hand away. “Let me use the shower first. I’ll put some towels out for you,” she says. “Do you want to wait here or go to the lab?”
“I’ll wait here,” I say, gesturing at the couch.
Ada leaves, and I take a seat, my world whirling from that brief touch.
As the pleasant haze of excitement fades, I feel all the aches and pains of the day again. It’s as if I’m one hundred and seventy. Closing my eyes, I call up the AROS interface and use the apps I didn’t get a chance to fully examine. When I tire of the apps, I set the alarm app to make sure I don’t oversleep tomorrow and dismiss the interface.
Before I can open my eyes, I feel something moving on my leg, followed by a crawling sensation on my shirt, followed by a sudden stop and a small pressure on my chest.
Something just scurried up my body.
“What the—?” I exclaim in panic and open my eyes.
A giant pair of creepy pink eyes are staring me down.
And they look hungry.