Sci-Fi Failed Attempt #1

Hehe. So, are we ready for some fiction now? It is so nice to post randomn homework on a blog, you have no idea, but I really want some good stuff in there, too. By now, everyone is either having flashbacks to their high school days or feels like a badly used tutor. Thus, to lighten the mood, here is some science fiction. Keep in mind that this is my first attempt at complete sci-fi. I usually do fantasy. But I was spending time with some friends in the Bay Area and one complained of how there was so little reputable science fiction nowadays. I completely agree. There is a dearth even among the fantasy (I almost broke down and bought the World of Warcraft series yesterday). So, in an attempt to inject some of myself into sci-fi, I now present to you part of a piece I am calling "2057".

In the year 2057, a year in the not too far distant future, a brilliant doctor discovered a microchip to be implanted in the brain in order to fix various dysfunctions. His chip reversed Alzheimer’s Disease, cured children of autism, and other mental retardations. People with seizures could be cured forever with his tiny microchip and people wanted to be cured. A fund was set up by a collection of charities making the chip affordable for everyone and soon, no one had to suffer from a brain disease. This doctor was given every prize imaginable, from the well known Nobel prize to a new prize called the Technology/Medicine Interfunctionary Prize for Exceptional Contributions to Humanity. A new era was rising, many said, with the advent of the microchip, one in which technology would not be merely used to diagnose, but to treat as well. This was an advance akin to walking on the moon and the first 3d ultrasound. The world was assuredly better for it.

The journalist known only as I.O. had struck again. In his weekly column known as the Bosporus Dispute, he put to use his brilliant intellect in questioning the wisdom of technology. “What will we be when a computer replacement for the entire brain is found?” he asked. “Will we be human or droid? Has Star Wars finally come to roost in the chicken coop of our time? And is this a good thing? With the dramatic step of the intra-oxegenary-cortex microchip created by that brilliant doctor we’ve heard so much about, not only our world but our bodies have come into a new age. Already, technicians and researchers are searching for a cure for the brain dead, the only group of people this chip seems not to help. They want to make a replacement brain in order to bring these people back from a state of unconscious existence. We are told they are close. But I dispute the wisdom of such a thing. A chip has no personality, no morality, no philosophical connection to the world. The impulses that make us hug trees and save animals will not be found in an a-human piece of plastic and metal. However misguided these impulses may be, they will be lost to those given this new ‘brain.’ I, for one, am not for it and I think the rest of humanity should be considering the question as well, ‘Is this a good thing?’”
This column was read by people all over America, all over the world via the internet and it created quite a stir. Finally, something had been found to unite the most hardened conservatives and the most radical liberals. Neither wanted to be made into mere robots. Jokes were made about A.I. and how everyone with this new implant would be the next Haley Joel Osment, an actor no one had heard of in nearly half a century. Of course, this shot everyone into throwback mode and teens suddenly found it to be cool to watch movies from the previous millennium. It was like bellbottoms all over again. But the fundamental thing that it did, was to split the two original opposing groups into two new opposing groups, generally referred to as the Technocrats and the Organicists, one in favor, one against.
The Technocrats argued that the new “brain” would bring people back to their loved ones, revive them so they could live their lives again. It was a mission of love and charity made possible by a tiny piece of technology. What an amazing advance in the history of the world and the human race! Besides, the Organicists didn’t even fully understand how the chip worked. It was not a wholesale replacement of the brain; indeed, this could never be possible, since the body would reject the chip immediately. Instead, an incision was made in the brain far enough to hit the direct center, where all the different sections of the brain met. There, the chip would be implanted in order to touch all those parts. Electrical impulses first administered from the outside would stimulate the rest of the brain and run through the chip, causing the brain to function again on the basis of the chips A.I.. The patient would wake up, revive, during the procedure while their skull and brain was still exposed and certain tests would allow the technicians and doctors to determine whether the operation had been a success or no. That was how the chip worked in a nutshell. It didn’t replace the brain, it reactivated it. As long as the subjects’ body didn’t reject the chip, they could go through rehab and then live the lives they had so far missed. They could hug their loved ones again and see their children. This was a good thing.
The Organicists’ arguments were harder to find since a media sympathetic with “love and charity” tended to bury their rational arguments in a shell of “redneck” characterizations and stereotypes. Whatever scientific or medical evidence they had for the negative effects of the chip was ignored. The common people, the citizens of every country, were torn between the information readily available and the information they had to work to find. The odds for and against were far from even, but neither were they stable enough to require a vote in the government or a process of legislature for or against use of the chip. There was a tense stalemate for a long time. Finally, however, in a world setting, the entire collection of countries and governments called for action regarding the issue. Enough noise had been made, they thought, to warrant government intervention. Through the efforts of the democratic countries, especially the United States and Britain, the matter was to be set for a vote by the people on the world’s first international ballot. Over the course of an entire year, the world voted and their votes were counted painstakingly. The final results in percentages was, 51% to 41% (all figures rounded up from 50.8% and 40.2%). By such a narrow margin, on of the biggest controversies of our age was decided.
The first test operation was undergone very publicly in a facility built especially for the procedure. It was televised in primetime. Everyone waited with baited breath as the chosen surgeon made the initial incisions. For hours, people watched in wonder as the human body was split open at the head with a tool looking strangely like a can opener, the internal organs manipulated in a horrendous fashion, for the chip was large enough to warrant something like “putting the pistachio back into the shell,” said I.O. later that week. When finally it was done, the subject opened its eyes for the first time and a cameraman named Joe Slater gave the world the most iconic image of the century or even the millennia. From above, the lens looked down at the face of the subject chosen and with the top half of its skull removed, brain exposed, the head opened its eyes and looked straight into the soul of the world. If after that moment, anyone thought to themselves, “Oh God, what have we done?” they didn’t say. For the world had gone too far to turn back now and, in the manner of the Jews who executed Jesus, the most famous man of the previous age, the guilt of the deed was on them like blood and it would be on their children after them. Something had been killed in that procedure while something had been re-gifted life. What that something was, or why, or for how long, no one wanted to know.
The media was very quiet about the whole thing after that initial success. They instead chose to make it commonplace, to numb people to the horror of it all. Soon, no one gave it a passing thought except to shiver and wonder at the great, powerful institution that was medicine.