The Mind Like A Strange Balloon | Page 3

the Aleph-Nought system."
"One of Alice's wizards, are you?"
"Hardly. Just a freelance troubleshooter. Could you tell me in general
what you are doing?"
She explained they were growing biocomputers, which were ultimately
intended to be implants--replacements for destroyed retinal tissue or
optic nerves. Athena Station was ideal for their work as they needed
zero gravity for the biolab, the Aleph system for their vision-simulation
program.
The retina, however, was such an active processor of data, and the optic
nerves were so dense--a million or so fibers in each one--that they were
having problems with the sheer weight and complexity of information
transfer. "Still, we have accomplished something," she said. "Rather the
Frankenstein stage but very interesting. Let me show you."
She reached to the back of her neck with the same gesture a woman
uses to let her hair down and pulled off two rectangular strips of flesh.
"Plastic flesh. Fastened with VF-Velcro." She picked up two cables

attached to the console beside her.
"Come here," she said. "Do you see?" Embedded in her neck were two
multiplex light-fiber junctions.
She took off her glasses and turned her face toward me. Her eyes were
brown and vacant, unfocused. She was blind.
She reached behind her, a cable in each hand, and snapped them home.
She walked toward me and stopped less than a foot away. "You are
about five ten," she said. "Hair the color of straw, light complexion . . .
though now flushed. You are wearing a red-striped shirt that does not
suit you, your pants need pressing, and your shoes are worn.
Everything you are wearing is well made, expensive. In short, you look
like what you are: a successful, intellectual gamesman, one who can
afford an air of neglect. You probably have luck with women--many
find that sort of thing appealing."
"What sort of thing?" Something had gone off the rails here.
"The shabby gentility. It's unimportant. We call this the CAV program
computer-assisted vision. It is fairly accurate but requires inordinate
amounts of hardware. Look around you." She pointed to small cameras
ringing the room. "Using I-Sight software, the Aleph system combines
views, approximates perspective, and corrects color hue and intensity.
The images lack resolution comparable to the eye's, and the field of
view is somewhat narrow. Still, I assure you, it is better than nothing . . .
much better."
"Yes. I suppose it is."
"In any case, that is our current stage of development. I am afraid that it
will be impossible for you to monitor our ongoing work at present. We
are far too busy. I would think your concern would be with the Aleph
system itself."
"It is, but I need to see things from the other end, the user's perspective.
I wouldn't be any bother. Strictly an observer, looking for anomalies in

subsystems involvement." Jargon surfaced to mask my confusion.
"No, not now. And I am afraid that is all the time I can give you."
Confused and routed, I left. Part of it was the aggressive freak show,
part her unexplained hostility, but there was more. She had reached out
with invisible hands and taken a clutch of nerves, not just the sensory
ones, but cells deep inside the brain, the ones that when they fire, make
you crazy.
Help the handicapped, I thought--fall in love with the blind.
I returned to the Ops Room. Alice Vance, director of IA Systems, was
sitting with Toshi. She was fifty or so, pear-shaped, and had hair the
color of old grease. We had worked together in Palo Alto, back when
Aleph was just a gleam in the SenTrax eye, and we got along well.
"Why didn't you warn me about Diana Heywood?" I said. "She gave
me a very hard time . . . took away my guns and ran me out of town."
"How very phallic of her," Alice said. She tapped in a HOLD command,
and the four data windows she had been working with faded from the
screen.
"Can you not work with other subsystems?" Toshi said. "Biological
operations are somewhat marginal."
"No. I'm doing what you pay me for, following my highly trained
intuition no matter where it leads." A couple of the KEs stood nearby,
listening. I saw them unconsciously nodding their heads in
agreement--I was the sharp young priest sent out by the Vatican to
diagnose spiritual malaise and so could demand total cooperation. "Just
kidding, Toshi, but seriously, I need to see what they're doing."
"Nonetheless, Jerry," he said, "we would not wish to interfere with
Doctor Heywood's project."
"I'll talk to her," Alice said. "You've got to understand, Jerry, she's a

special case."
"I can see that."
"Let me tell you about her," she said. "MIT, Caltech, Stanford."
"Holy, holy, holy," I said. The main