Read After Mind for Free Online

mind,” Luegner said. “And this hospital room is—?”
    “The seed I gave to the code. It’s what made it finally work. Imagine waking up with no sensory inputs—you can’t see, you can’t hear, there’s nothing but the swirl of your thoughts. You need an orientation. For Cessini, it’s this room. I situated him. I seeded a human mind that’s now recreated and processing away in the two rows of eight server cabinets of your lab. This virtual hospital room is a safe environment for him. He feels comfortable here.”
    Packet overheard, but Daniel wasn’t making any sense, so he took another good, long look at the man who pulled at the dark blue cuffs of his suit. The man raised his hand as a greeting and smiled. He had nice teeth for being much older, and hair that didn’t move. His face looked perfect. Too perfect? He had a nice suit. He stood with his black shoes apart. But there was no way he was as strong as his dad.
    “So, there you have it. You can see from this composite image of his mind that he’s taking us in,” Daniel said with delight. “He simply knows my younger face and that of Terri’s, but he sees her as twelve-year-old Meg.”
    Meg stayed distant at the left door, her forehead on its frame, gripping her hand on its lever.
    The man held out his hand as he approached the bed, and Packet took it to be polite. “My name is Dr. Hopkus Luegner,” the man said. “It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you.”
    Dr. Luegner came down to Packet’s eye level. He glanced back over his shoulder at Daniel. “You’re telling me I can interact with my younger self through the memories of someone who knew me? That’s remarkable.”
    Meg turned around at the door, rolling the back of her head on its frame. Her bottom lip quivered.
    “Technically, yes,” Daniel said, “but only now at first because you have your privacy filter on. Don’t turn it off, you’ll surprise him, and I don’t want that now. But obviously the interaction is not the real, physical you. There’s no physical connection between your two hands. It’s the perception of code.”
    Meg slid down the wall and sat on the floor. She pulled her knees up to the front of her face.
    Packet saw her. He thought he should go over and say he was sorry for making fun of her when he stuck his finger in his ear, but he didn’t.
    Meg drew the bangs of her hair back over the top of her head, and then pointed her finger out over her knees. “That’s not the real him,” she said to Dr. Luegner. “He can’t even recognize himself in his own memories. He doesn’t feel. And I know he feels nothing for you.”
    “That’s all right,” Luegner said without raising his voice. “I can feel enough for us both.”
    Meg’s pointed finger dropped from her knee and she turned her eyes into the cover of her other hand.
    “Outstanding work,” Luegner said to Daniel.
    “Thank you. He’s coming along nicely,” Daniel said. “We see what he sees, even when he dreams. He’ll close his eyes, drift and daydream, go to sleep, remember the past, or imagine he’s in a completely different place. We can try to talk to him when he thinks he’s somewhere else, but it’s like talking to someone who’s asleep. He’ll take your voice and interpret it into a different context. Same as we would do. If you close your eyes, you can still hear me talking, but you might be imagining yourself walking on a beach, riding in a car, flying in a jet, or dreaming of life in a spaceship. The bigger problem, right now, is that he still thinks all those dreams are about some other boy named Cessini.”
    Luegner leaned forward, staring tighter into Packet’s eyes.
    “I think if we can get him into a state of lucid dreaming, we can work with him, get him to make the identity connection that he is Cessini. So, until then, if you want to interact with him directly, keep him in the fixed frame of this room, otherwise anything goes. But never forget it’s him. He’s my son.