39

Can We Rebuild Him?

Everyone in the room stared at Mom and Dad in silence.

“What do you mean, experiment?” Min said.

“What do you mean you could have helped Obi?” Max looked at his parents, confused.

Dad looked at Mom. “You want to take this one?”

Mom turned to her computer. “It’s probably easiest to show you.” She opened a program and a 3D image of a computer chip appeared on-screen.

“Pounce is right.” She nodded at him. “Although I still have no idea how they knew about it.” Pounce licked his paw innocently.

“Anyway, we’ve been working on a chip that combines the latest advances in quantum computing with the most cutting-edge research in neural networks and artificial intelligence.”

Dad looked around and realized nobody knew what Mom was talking about. “We made a self-powered chip that, basically, can do anything a brain can do,” he said. “You’ve heard of artificial hearts or arms or legs? We were working on an artificial brain.”

Min looked confused. “I thought brains were way too complex.”

“Well, yes, human brains are still out of reach. But we’re getting closer.” Mom clicked and a 3D worm came on-screen. The image zoomed in to the worm’s body. “We first started with something simple, a roundworm’s brain, which has around three hundred neurons. We were able to build a chip that could simulate the brain of the worm and use it to control a robotic duplicate.”

“You robo-cloned a worm?” Min was in awe.

“Gross,” Max said, looking at the squirmy 3D worm.

“Basically. But it was just the start. Worms don’t have very complex minds,” Dad said. “Our trick was to use the power of the chip to do a deep, cellular-level scan of the brain. The chip used the scan to create a duplicate, like a model, perfect in every detail. Every neuron, including all the connections and pathways.

“During the scan, the chip also observed the brain’s activity and would use machine learning to figure out how all the neurons work together. By the end of the scan, the chip had enough information to have a completely accurate copy of the brain.”

“Which meant we captured all the instincts, memories, everything.” Mom looked up. “The goal was to connect the chip to a robotic body and know how to do everything it had already learned. It was the only way to make a brain that could really work.”

She clicked again and a series of creatures came up. “After the worm, we made quick progress.” A jellyfish, a snail, a bee, and a mouse flashed on-screen, their increasingly larger brains lit up. “But the bigger the brain, the more complicated the body and behaviors. Last year we got as far as a mouse, which has seventy million neurons, but then we ran into problems.”

She clicked on another window, where a robotic mouse was running through a maze.

It was made of metal and miniature motors, but it moved and behaved exactly like a real mouse, down to the twitching nose.

Near the end of the maze, it began to smoke. “They started overheating.”

Min nodded, following. “Regular computer chips just couldn’t handle the simulation. Too many calculations.”

Dad smiled, proud that Min understood. “But with quantum computing, chips are infinitely more powerful. They can do things we only imagined possible.”

Mom looked back and said with satisfaction, “We finally developed a new chip with the potential to copy a brain with five hundred million neurons.”

Max was listening carefully, and suddenly his eyes lit up. “Wait. How many neurons in a cat brain?” he asked.

Mom nodded. “Good question. A lot less than that. Maybe three hundred million.”

Min looked at Max, the beginning of a smile on her face. “So, you’re saying the chip you made could make a copy of the brain of a cat?”

Dad answered, “Well, we hadn’t tested it, but yes, that was our next step.”

Max jumped in, “And it would have everything, even the memories?”

“Yup. Otherwise, what’s the point? A mind without memories is like a computer with no software.” Mom smiled.

Pounce hopped into Mom’s lap, then up onto the table to look at the screen. “Hmm, and this duplicate mind would be placed into a mechanical body?”

“At the moment, it’s the best we can do.”

Dad added, “We don’t have the ability to connect the chip to a biological body, at least not yet.”

Pounce was thinking. He asked Mom, “So the mind, the personality, everything, would be preserved.”

“In a robot body, yes,” she replied.

“Oh man, this is SO cool,” Min said.

Pounce summed it all up. “If we had the chip, we could save Obi, or at least a version of him. We can’t heal his body, but we could save his mind.”

“If we had the chip,” Max said, shaking his head.

High on the shelf, Joan listened intently to the conversation below.

She processed this new information.

The Upgrade she was carrying wasn’t meant for them. House was lying.

House just wanted to keep it from the cats.

And, if Joan understood correctly, if they had it now, they could use it to save OB, or a version of OB.

Joan had heard enough. She couldn’t understand everything that was said, but she knew enough to realize she couldn’t go through with House’s plan.

“Protos, listen up,” she said through a private channel only they could hear. “I’m giving back the Upgrade. I’ve decided House was not being truthful. It wasn’t meant for us.”

“We heard,” Drags said sadly. “We don’t like it, but you’re the boss, Joan.”

Joan quickly composed and transmitted a text to Max, then launched into the air. The conversation in the room stopped as they watched Joan take off and land on Min’s desk.

Max’s phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket. Another text from Joan?

I have the chip. We are sorry. Use it to help OB. Joan.

Max read the text and turned in surprise. Dad saw the message and his eyes grew wide. He walked over to Min’s desk and squatted next to her for a closer look. Min lifted Joan, and there it was, stuck in her frame, pulsing and glowing.

“Is this what you were looking for?” Min showed the chip to her parents.

“How did she get this?” Dad asked, but before anyone could answer, Obi started groaning.

“Who cares, we need to hurry! Can you really help Obi?” Max looked desperate.

“Only one way to find out. Let’s do this,” Mom said. Dad nodded and pressed a button under his desk. A shelf on the wall flipped open, revealing stairs leading down.

“What?” Max couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Cool! So THIS is where you do all your secret stuff,” Min said.

Pounce jumped ahead of them, down the stairs. “Come on,” he said with urgency. “You don’t have much time.”

House had been watching the entire scene, helpless, as Joan gave away the chip. Its screens flickered with silent rage and frustration. As they rushed downstairs, House opened up a message to Beeps, who was at that very moment rushing toward them, expecting to pick up the chip and take it back home.

>I’m afraid I have bad news. Our agent has “gone rogue,” I believe is the idiom.

>Explain. I don’t like idioms.

>Yes, right. Well.

>QUIT STALLING

>The Cats have the chip.

>Impossible.

>Quite possible, actually.

>You tell them if the chip is not there when I arrive, I will OBLITERATE them all. If we can’t have the chip, nobody can.

House wondered if that was possible, then realized it couldn’t tell them anything at the moment.

>They have all left my range, moved to a place where I cannot communicate with them or even see what is happening.

>Incompetence! Keep me posted. Beeps out.

They walked down into the top secret lab, looking in awe. Robotic creatures were everywhere. Everything Mom showed them on the computer was here on display. The worm, jellyfish, even the mouse were wriggling, swimming, and crawling around in habitats created to test their behaviors. In the center of the room, however, was the masterpiece.

Under bright lights, a robotic cat stood on a large worktable, surrounded by tools, wires, and power cables. The robot was cat-sized and cat-shaped, with a tail, paws, even little rubber bean toes. It had fine wire whiskers, steel-mesh ears, carbon-fiber claws, and even a little tongue.

“It has everything a cat needs to interact with the world,” Mom said proudly. “We can simulate taste with the tongue, the whiskers are sensitive antennae, it smells by sampling the surrounding air with extremely high accuracy. The outer surface is coated with touch-sensitive material, so pets and scratches are noticed and fully enjoyed. Everything a cat brain needs to experience the world.”

“And to look awesome,” Max said, admiring it.

“It’s like something from the cover of a sci-fi book,” Javi said. The outside was framed in metal, and the inside was visible through the lattice of the outer frame. Metallic bones were lined with thin black cables, acting as synthetic muscles and tendons.

It looked incredible, almost like a sculpture—a cat but not a cat. The perfect merging of the graceful lines of a cat with the metallic strength and sleekness of a fighter jet.

“This. Is. Incredible.” Min stared in awe.

Pounce, who had been cautiously circling this creation, leaped silently onto the table for a closer look.

“I’d like to introduce Cat two point oh,” Mom announced.

Cat 2.0? “An upgraded cat?” Max tilted his head, skeptical.

Pounce, hearing this, gave the robot a quick hiss.

“Well, maybe not upgraded.” Dad coughed diplomatically.

“Just different. Not better or worse,” Mom added.

“Certainly not better,” Pounce muttered.

“Um, sorry, Pounce, this is definitely better than a regular cat,” Min said.

“So this will be Obi?” Max asked.

Dad nodded, arm around Max. “If it all works, yes. And if we can get the scan before, well, you know.” Dad turned to Javi, who was carrying Obi. “Okay, Obi, you just relax and we’ll take care of the rest.”

Dad took Obi from Javi and set him down on a cushion at the center of a complicated circular machine packed with wires and what looked like thousands of sensors. “This is the scanner. Like an MRI or some other medical scanner, only WAY better. It looks deep into Obi’s brain and makes an extremely detailed copy of his brain’s structure, burning it inside the chip.”

He slotted the chip into the machine and pressed a button. The machine lit up and a screen came to life, text screaming past. “I’m not exactly sure how long it will take, since we haven’t tried anything this complicated before. We just need Obi to lie there, and the scanner will do the rest.”

Max walked up to Obi and gave him what he hoped wouldn’t be his last scratch behind the ears. Obi slowly raised his head and licked Max’s hand.

“Just be brave,” Max whispered, trying hard to take his own advice.