The workstation was in the garage which was far from encouraging. Any mad scientist working out of a garage deserved the gamma radiation bombardment they would receive. The machine was placed on a solid wood dining table and surrounded by four carved wooden chairs. Isaac grabbed a fifth chair and pulled it next to the table.
Jay pulled out what looked like a motorcycle helmet with a huge set of cables trailing behind it. “This is the first time we've ever run with five people hooked up. We always have kept one person off the machine for manual shutdown.”
“Awesome, I get to be a guinea pig.”
“Now,” said Isaac, “we need to shave part of your head.”
“Wait, what?”
“Not much, just a small rectangle, about 1x2 inches.” Jay turned around and showed Vince a small bald patch on the back of his head, just below the bump on the base of the skull. Veronica turned around and parted her long brown hair, showing a small patch of shaved skin hidden by her hair. They sat down at the table and reached for helmets.
“Oh. Man I don't even get to choose a red or blue pill.”
Tasha grinned. “I have skittles.”
“That'll work,” said Vince. Tasha reached into her purse, pulled out a red bag, and tossed it to Vince.
“Nice,” he said, and tore open the bag and looked at the candies. “I guess there is no blue pill. There's some fine print. He poured a handful worth or fruity sugar balls straight into his mouth and started chewing, and then panicked.
“Hey, is eating going to mess up this process?” said Vince after rushing a swallow. “Do I have to wait fifteen minutes before swimming the neural transmissions?”
“We haven't had any problems with nausea or cramps,” said Veronica calmly, and handed Vince a tablet. “Look at each image and focus on it for at least five seconds. Read each page, word for word, even the nonsense words, don't move your lips. Can you read latin?” Vince shook his head. “Good. One page is in Latin. Read it as clearly as you can, word by word. The machine will monitor your thoughts and use your reactions to the information to calibrate to your thoughts. When you're ready, press enter on the keyboard, and then select the page numbers on the tablet.
“What are we constructing?” asked Isaac. Vince went over the screen, concentrating on the statue of liberty for a few seconds before moving on to the Space Needle out of Seattle.
“Vince chooses,” said Anthony. “This is his test run. He runs the construct.”
Vince looked up from the tablet. “What do you mean? How do you run the construct?”
“Choose a topic,” said Isaac from right behind Vince. He showed Vince a pair of clippers and after a quick zzzzzt, Vince felt something cold get pressed against bare skin just above his neck. “And you take the lead when we get in. Just start thinking about the topic.”
“Okay,” said Vince, “What topic should I choose?”
“Anything,” said Jay. He looked like a kid who had set up a prank and couldn't keep a straight face. It made Vince distinctly uncomfortable as he waited for the and feathers to fall. It was obvious he did not understand the extent of what was going on here, but in for a penny and in for a pound.
He looked around the garage, and said. “Condo. Will that work?”
Jay looked disappointed for a second, which greatly helped Vince's confidence, but then Jay nodded. “Sure. We haven't done anything simplistic yet. This could be interesting.”
“Always happy to be the village idiot,” said Vince. Veronica reached across the table and tapped on Vince's tablet screen. Vince nodded and swiped to the next image.
Vince kept a look somewhere between bored and interested on his face, but anxiety was building up inside of him. This was a lot of hardware he was being hooked up to, and despite the fact that he was in a soft science, he understood the concepts of scientific experiments and probably had a much stronger grasp of the consequences of advancing science at a dangerous rate better than anyone else in the room.
He hit the Latin page. It used the English alphabet which made it easy to read, and he wondered at the parallel. Here you had a group of people who created a device to read human thoughts, but how much did they comprehend about what they could be doing. They could see the letters and string them together into sound, but how much did they actually understand.
Jay obviously believes there is nothing to worry about, but considering the apprehension of Veronica and Anthony, this was not a simple situation. And despite how they were acting, Vince knew Isaac and Tasha enough to know that they were worried. Something bothered them that no one was saying.
Vince thought about what they had said, trying to place the concern, and remembered what Tasha had said. We even did the construct... They had run a construct on him. How does that make any sense? Why would they need to use their toy to convince Anthony that they could trust him? It didn't make any sense.
At the same time, somewhere along the line loyalty became something hardwired inside of Vince. He knew it, the same way a person could recognize when they were hungry, but it didn't change the fact that people have to eat, and Vince could give up food about as easily as he could leave Isaac and Tasha out to dry. The fact that both of them felt so strongly they could trust him both uplifted and irritated him. They could trust him, but they also know that he wouldn't say no. The more he thought about it, the more he was certain he was just dragged into a stadium-sized mess, but he just couldn't wrap his mind around what exactly was wrong.
He kept his face bland, finished the last image on the tablet and pressed the complete button. Jay, Anthony, Veronica, and Tasha were all also hooked up to the machine. Isaac sat off in front of the computer terminal. None of them were speaking, and apparently were only waiting on him.
“So once it calibrates to your thoughts, you don't have to calibrate again?” asked Vince. Jay nodded. “Right, so when do we start?”
“Whenever you're ready,'' said Anthony.
“Once we start,” said Tasha calmingly, “it can be disorienting. That is normal. Remember, you are starting the construct, so when you get in, just start thinking about your topic. When you're done, just focus on Stop in the same way.”
“Perfect,” said Vince and he pointed at Isaac. “Igor, throw the Switch.”
The world flashed white like a camera in a dark room, and Vince was falling, tumbling, towards something overwhelmed by the glare. Vince tried to shut his eyes, and felt complete panic when his eyes wouldn't even blink and he had no idea what direction he was falling towards.
He wasn't alone. He couldn't see anyone, but he felt the presence of other people, the same way you could tell when there is someone else in a dark room. He called out, but no sound came, and he disturbingly recognized he had no mouth. He felt a pull, but couldn't feel his body, couldn't blink, and for the life of him he couldn't feel himself breathing.
Out of the panic, reality broke in like a hammer that he was in the machine, and vaguely he understood the other presences were the other people hooked up with him. Vince had no idea how long he had been here, and he would have sprinted across the freeway if he could break this sense of selfless falling. His mind searched, and he remembered the instructions he had received.
He focused on condos. Condominiums.
The magnesium white filled with rushing images coming in like major league fastballs. Vince felt like he was tied to the front of a train plowing through Downtown San Francisco. He couldn't move, couldn't look away, and felt utterly helpless as forms crashed right through him. He was plunged inside a building made of all planes and angles, with detail snapping into place. Instantly he perceived the form was the condominium he was now in, but it was like there were four dozen of him, staring at the condo from fifty directions at once.
His knowledge of the condo flung out before him, and he had absolutely no control over any of it. Like reflex, the areas he had not seen were filled in with presumptions about the building itself. He hadn't seen the bathroom yet, but from his knowledge of how buildings were arranged and Tasha's taste, his prediction of the structure was wrenched from him too fast for pain and thrown into a probable configuration. With a shock, Vince realized this was the construct.
The construct's form shifted immediately according to new information. His presumption for the location of the restroom was accurate, but he was off on the dimensions and several details. He had the color, but there was a statuette of a deer next to the sink and a rose shaped soap dispenser, but none of this knowledge came from him. It was Tasha's herself, providing details about her home.
Information rushed in like major league fastballs. Not only from Tasha, but information broke into Vince's awareness from Anthony about the building, details about the probable electrical layout from Jay. Vince kept wanting to dodge, to move, but there was no body, only awareness of information. Each person's facts felt distinct, like their information had its own voice to it. Vince knew Tasha had lived there for three years, how much her parents had paid for it, the fees charged by the co-op, the property taxes.
Vince's own knowledge on property value jolted into the construct and his consciousness dove down a line of numbers. Just as quickly, mathematical calculations from Veronica projected a current value for the property, as well as a projected rate of increase. Vince felt disoriented by the rush of information disoriented, like he was attached to a multi-directional bungee cord and kept getting snapped from one direction to the next. The form of the construct crystallized as inaccurate details were thrown out and replaced with verified fact, or more accurate projections, and for one fleeting instant the construct was still.
Then Vince was thrown forward as the construct expanded, information torn from him and attached to the construct. Condominium: a series of smaller dwellings are each individually owned on a piece of real estate and shared exterior areas. The principle is associated with affordable housing while still providing ownership to the individual instead of a larger entity.
His past research and affordable housing flew out before him, flooding his perception with a framework of information and shrinking Tasha's condo to a minute section of his reference. Vince desperately fought to keep his head above water. The fact that he realized he had no head in this forsaken realm didn't help in the slightest. Knowledge flew in from all sides. Data piled on the frame like an army of speed junkies were equipped with an unlimited supply of drugs and Legos.
Architectural principles from Anthony and laid out information on different types of buildings. Electrical layouts and power consumption laced through the designs from Jay, along with an entirely different branch created around low income housing projects in southern California. In a distinctly uncomfortable sensation, data from a report on the effects of cut funding and the decline of the area in the late eighties blasted forth from him. Vince hadn't read the report in five years but it came back in crystal clarity, engulfing and enlarging the branch.
Instantly as the numbers were recalled, they were sorted and recalculated by Veronica, providing perspective in a sense that Vince never had before in all of his research. He was a fair math student, in fact he was stronger than most, but the way that Veronica grasped numbers was how Vince understood how to walk. The relevance of the numbers instantly combined with Vince's research of the cost of building and he understood how much must have been stolen or misappropriated in the process of building the projects.
Vince tried to breathe, couldn't feel himself breathe, and would have ran if there was anywhere to go. Facts Vince hardly remembered came back with perfect recollection and fired into the construct, filling in gaps, adjusting other people's information. He wanted it to stop, to slow, to do something that he could control, but all he could do is observe, and somehow absorb the information.
He understood every aspect of the construct perfectly like it was all his own memory, each detail ingrained in his mind. It became simple to perceive the difference between conjecture and concrete information. False assumptions were immediately challenged by four other minds and only remained if they could not be refuted. There was no opportunity or ability for deceit or embellishment. There wasn't even an opportunity for intentionally withholding information. Whether he wanted to or not, any detail deemed viable erupted out of him.
Housing complexes in Southern Africa forged out a new branch which was instantly being added to by Anthony and Tasha. Much of Anthony's technical experience quickly went through and overwrote Vince's assumptions with more concrete information, while Jay expanded on the engineering, the power requirements, and electrical design, with Tasha giving information on population support of an area and physical needs of inhabitants. Veronica overlaid everything with a sense of concrete calculation and finite precision.
The concept was expanding so quickly Vince became certain he was drowning. The wave of terror pushed him towards a primal reaction, and the realization that flight wasn't an option nearly shut him down completely. He had to take control. This wasn't fight or flight, it was sink or swim. If he didn't do something, this construct was going to consume him.
Vince stretched his perspective as wide as he could, trying to encompass all of the construct in his direct line of sight, and dove into the construct, propelling himself specifically towards the architectural concepts of building condominiums. Instantly, he felt the other intellects pulled with him. He focused directly on the building of condos. Historical information lashed out from him adding tendrils on the history of construction, the different techniques used in the world, and the different needs of a housing complex.
The focus brought an instant of relief as Vince realized he had some control of the construct, but immediately the construct took on a life of its own. Solar power was introduced from Jay, and numbers were quickly added, analyzed, sorted and placed into relevant data. Tasha's research on hydroponic agriculture combined with the solar research. Home automation principles lashed forth, computer controlled security, heating, even programmed refrigerator notifications to Amazon to order more milk. A script whipped forth from Vince that would take care of the software, which was instantly thrown out and replaced by a more efficient set of code written in C++ from Anthony.
Vince felt like a cannonball being fired repeatedly in various directions only to be pulled back and refired. Alternative building materials, sustainable growth, cost-effective method of construction, the number of people housed in an area, necessary food production, use as homeless shelters, most efficient use of land, environmental studies...
“Stop!” Vince yelled. His eyes snapped open and he pushed off the table in front of him. The chair leaned back past the tipping point. Vince reached back for the table and slowed himself enough to turn and pivot on a chair leg before his grip slipped and he collapsed on his side. Isaac cursed and jumped up from the computer and helped Vince up off the ground. “What the hell!?”