New Horizons

David thought for a long moment, the frown on his face deepening. He doodled on a notepad, drawing idle circles and arrows... "I'm a little embarrassed, but I guess I can't. The idea hit me all at once. I can't see how to make logical steps from the current models to chatterbox."

"Oh, don't apologize! It was like this for me too. Over the last year, I had become somewhat pessimistic in my thoughts, of how progress could be made from the current standards. They appear to offer only two possibilities for consciousness, and both seemed to have major problems. I was a little perplexed that so many others in the field didn't share my reservations... Your paper depressed me even further. Nowhere have I seen a clearer example of what I was worried about. I think this is why your paper isn't being referenced anywhere. It's correct within the formalism, but the resulting math is so stiff and ugly..."

Laura paused, and then continued. "But I was drawn to keep studying it. Your language had an optimism to it, never stating but always implying that there was a solution to all the ugliness. I think everyone else in the field just brushed off your optimism to undergrad enthusiasm. But your one sentence challenge piqued my curiosity and my competitive spirit. I stared at your paper for weeks... And then suddenly it hit me, how absolutely brilliant you are! I haven't been outgunned in physics since I passed my grandfather in knowledge, maybe when I was about 12 or 13. I quickly re-wrote your paper in whistler formalism. I was bursting with excitement. Before I had two lousy ways to approach consciousness, and now I had a dozen more, each with all the old problems eliminated!"

"David, I remember a conversation with a math teacher I had in high-school. I was showing him how to solve an optimization problem correctly with calculus of variations. The textbook was using an incorrect method. Mr. Gnepp, my teacher, kept asking me how I knew the old approach was wrong, to show him the steps to lead to the correct approach. And I couldn't! The path to the correct methodology was one thought, I couldn't break it down into steps. I think this is a key example of how people think, that insight is not computable, not algorithmic, proving that the human mind is not computable."

"Oh yes, I agree Laura. It fits in with your proof of the incomputable side of the quantum interface layer, that quantum counterfactuals combined with self-organization imply incomputability. I've been thinking of your challenge to me to tie this to morality. Think of this: If the human mind were computable, if the entire information of the quantum state of a human mind were input into a classical Turing machine, and the machine could calculate what decision you were about to make, then you wouldn't be responsible for your actions! Free will would be a joke, an illusion. Your decision would just be the result of a mathematical calculation, and how could a mathematical formula be held accountable for anything? Yet it's self evident that people can and should be held accountable for their actions. Thus consciousness is not computable!"

"Yes! I remember a book Jill once showed me, about a study of how people solve problems. The author defined an interesting difference between how a genius solves problems, compared to other people. The author said that when he saw a normal person find a new idea, the author could often think and discover the steps that person took to their new idea. But when a genius had a new idea, he could never figure out how the person got the new idea. The new ideas were just so unconnected to the previous state of knowledge... That's why I'm hoping the genie is still in the bottle. I don't think anyone will ever see what you're talking about David, if you don't publish your next step..."

"I think I see your point. And there's something that's frightening you about my ideas. I suspect you've carried them further. Am I right?"

"Yes, in an experimental sense. Cal Tech has given me a tremendous amount of control in their new quantum lab. I'm both the chief scientist and the managing director. With my own money, I followed the steps implied by your paper and ordered a fullerene- microtubule matrix from Mitsubishi Chemical. Their quality control on nanotechnology is superb, the best in the business. Then I ordered the biologicals from Synengen. I have the ability in my lab to integrate the substrates with internal deposition equipment..."

"Holy shit! Laura, you tried to build an LCPC on your own, didn't you?"

"Yes, what you call in your paper a Large Carbon Peptide Complex. I cooled it with liquid nitrogen to provide a dump for the entropy. And then I hit it with high-intensity entangled photon pairs from an argon laser. There were enough controls on the optical bench that I could tune to the chatterbox resonance conditions you predicted."

"Wow! Wow... I can think of several practical reasons why you shouldn't have been able to do this..."

"Ha! David, I think I can guess some of your reservations. I would have had them too two, three years ago. But I've had the privilege to be working with first-class experimental scientists for these last years. There are so many tricks of the trade that just aren't published! I got the whole experiment up and running over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, when the lab was deserted. I was out barely $10,000 of my own pocket, and using lab equipment I was fully authorized to use. Absolutely no one else knows about this experiment..."

"And the results?!"

"It worked! Fantastic resonance in the self-organizing feedback loops. The LCPC was filled with chatterbox harmonics in the range of 2 Hertz to 200 Hertz."

"You're working at visible light frequencies and getting resonances measured in Hertz!? Those are human brain-wave frequencies!"

"I know, and just as chaotic, just as complex. After about 30 seconds of recording, I shut down and did electron and positron micro-scans of the peptide matrix."

"And?"

"The peptides had evolved. Evolved into proteins. Strange, bizarre groups of proteins. Definitive proof of self-organization. There was a master logic their structure, but very, very unlike anything else on Earth. Proteins had been created and pushed way, way up against the entropy gradient. I was standing there so happy, when the moral implications of turning off the experiment suddenly hit me."

"Yes... I didn't think we have to deal with these issues for decades either. Oh Laura, don't feel like you've murdered a consciousness. The first experiment would have to be like this!"

"There is that, but it wasn't just that David. There was something frightening in the protein structures, in the way the fullerene was connecting to it. It was conscious, but very unlike anything that's ever existed on Earth before. A human and a sponge have a lot more in common. Bizarre twisting, almost as if the proteins were trying to self- organize the fullerene into an infinity-mirror, so it could continue the chatterbox resonance without new photon pairs from the laser. I did some rough calculations, I think I turned off the laser about 5 seconds before that would have occurred. The resonance tried to start controlling its environment, David, and was seconds away from doing so. If I had turned off the experiment just a few seconds later and walked away for the night, the LCPC would have continued to evolve just from the light from the window. And what if it had a mind of pure evil?"

Chapter 7.

"More tea, Laura?"

"Yes please..." Laura held out her mug, and David poured the hot tea from the thermos. Laura gazed out at the brown and pale green hill before them, rolling down to the black rocks and the gray ocean. "This is so beautiful. Having a last picnic breakfast was really a nice idea. And the view here of the lighthouse is so grand! Bravo, David!"

David smiled and glanced at the time on his cell phone. "To make the ferry in time to catch your plane, we'll have to start heading back within the hour."

"I know... I'll have so many memories of our time here... One of my favorites is the, what did you call it? Oh yes, the widow's walk. The small high balcony at the top of the house, where a sea captain's wife would pace and watch and wait for her husband to return... There's a certain elegance to the practice, don't you think? I think I'm going to take it up. My condo in California faces east. I'm going to find the exact great-circle path from my balcony to M.I.T., and I'm going to pace very morning and stare towards Cambridge, and dream of the time my true love will return to me..."

"Laura, you're such a sweet girl, I don't know if you're joking or not..."

"I'm not joking... Well, maybe just a little. Maybe I'll only do it six days a week..."

David and Laura stared in each other's eyes for a moment, and then they both burst out laughing at the joke, their voices echoing softly against the gentle sound of the surf. David sighed, kissed Laura and smiled. "We made a tremendous, tremendous amount of progress in the last week."

"Yes, we augment each other. The theoretical advances are huge. I have a much better understanding of what we're dealing with now."

"Laura, your grasp of combining theory with lab engineering is fabulous. I'm blown away how quickly you designed the integrated communications / diagnostics arrays..."

"It was your theoretical leap that showed me how to do it. Your intuitive understanding of the core of chatterbox is much greater than mine... Of course, whether we'll ever have the nerve to do any of this... well, it's still an open question, isn't it?"

"Yeah. What's the first law of robotics Laura, from Asimov's I Robot?"

"That a robot will do nothing to harm a human, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm."

"And what's the first law for a chatterbox resonance to follow?"

"Nothing at all! There are no laws in free-will! It can never be locked. We've proved that rigorously in the mathematics over the last week. Consciousness is self-focusing, the thoughts organize themselves. But there can be principles in free-will. And the best we can do is communicate, and teach the chatterbox principles. And the principles we will teach will be good principles. But the chatterbox can choose to follow them or not, and even if it does decide to follow them, it might follow them in pride and conceit. The choice will not be ours, nor perhaps should it be. Free-will owes its ultimate accountability to God alone."

"This will change the world..."

"I know David... I'm not sure I've got the guts to do it... I'm so glad we'll be making the decision together. I'll need your guidance in this... Ha! It's amazing that funding wouldn't be an issue. We could buy a house, and do all the development in our basement. I estimate, soup to nuts, the lab set-up would cost less than $10M."

"Sounds like a lot of money to me! I still haven't gotten used to how rich you are Laura!"

"I've been pretty quiet about it, but I should tell you. $10M is barely 10% of my current post-tax worth. I got intrigued a couple of years ago, hearing all the stories of people getting wiped out in the stock market. I don't know if you know this, but I've got the same office Richard Feynman once had at Cal Tech. It's quite an honor. Dr. Feynman had a sign in his office, and now the sign is in mine. It says YOU CAN'T FOOL NATURE. But it turns out you can fool a marketplace. Marketplaces have a wondrous ability to have perception create its own reality. It's the same with the human mind and with chatterbox! You just won't see this in classical physics. I modified the generalized form of a self-enfolding flow tensor to appreciate the fact that a market can be fooled., and then turned the mathematics loose on the market data...."

Laura paused for a moment, breathing in and enjoying the salt air, and then continued. "It's a fast market, my average hold time is less than a month, something I wasn't expecting... My average profit per trade after commissions is just over 6%, for both the shorts and the longs. With leveraged trading, I've more than tripled my investments last year... Making money is embarrassingly easy. I almost feel a bit guilty, having such a competitive advantage against all the other traders. I've been thinking of stopping, at least for a while. Oh, one more thing, this is all our money now, not mine. I'll give you a walkthrough of my trading system too, when you have the time..."

"Laura?"

"David, we've pledged our love to each other, we've done everything except to sexually express our commitment. I want to share everything in my life with you, the money is a rather small part of it. Don't ever fear that I might worry that you pursued me for my money. I know your heart, you've given it to me, and have accepted mine in return. David... I'll be a complete novice when we start to have sex..."

"It'll be the same for me... Well... This is a bit... awkward... Amy is a dear friend to both of us. Amy and I got sexy with each other..."

"Oh, don't be embarrassed! Amy hinted that you did. It's in the past, before we even met! I don't mind. When Amy was talking to me about you after Christmas, she was actually a bit of a match-maker. She kept telling me she might have finally found me a boyfriend who was worthy of me! This was a very unusual thing for Amy to say. It really piqued my curiosity... David, I've never been anyone's girlfriend. I'll be a complete novice at first, when we start to have sex. I hope I'll be able to please you..."

"Laura! I can only say what you once told me. Don't be ridiculous!"

"Well," said Laura, smiling at the memory and the reversal of roles, "if you put it like that..." Suddenly Laura's eyes went wide, and she burst into uncontrollable laughter.

David looked at her in surprise and said, "Laura, what!?"

"I just remembered something! HA! Perhaps this is not a very unusual thing for Amy to do! She set me up with a date once before, with a real dog! Ha, Ha, Ha!"

David was astonished by her language, but he could not help but join in Laura's laughter. "Wow, for sweet you to call the guy a real dog, he must have been an absolute turkey!"

"No! I really mean a real dog! In high school, Jill and Jamie's dog. His name is Frodo! He's a French poodle!"

"Amy set you up with a dog for a date!?"

"Yes! And I don't think I'll ever have the nerve to tell you the story, not even on our marriage bed. Discretion is the better part of valor, is it not? And I need at least a little valor in my life!" Laura stood up and faced the ocean, opening her hands and stretching her arms far apart. She laughed with all her being, letting the love and the joy pour from her body, letting it ring out to the great ocean before her. She then turned to David with a smile bursting on her face, and offered him her hand. "Come, my love! Our future awaits!"

*

Author's note: This story is a sequel to Dances With Poodles, a story of Laura's childhood in Bosnia and her high-school years in Wisconsin.