tmp0 Read Online Free Page A

no lack of
capital to support her research.
    Most digital
intelligence researchers focused on non-biological substrates,
developing software that could only be used in computers. In this,
they were continuing the artificial intelligence work that had begun
two centuries ago. Davidson thought that bio-substrates, though
annoying to deal with, had certain properties that lent themselves
well to high performance once the digital intelligence transferred
across platforms, so to speak. As everyone else moved toward silicon,
she shifted to organic media.
    Eventually the
Fortune 500 companies grew interested in the long-term potential of
digital intelligence and it became trendy to have dig-int teams
installed in branches of both marketing and research departments.
Many universities had started offering digital intelligence programs
alongside the more traditional cognitive science degrees. The CEO who
had fired her seven years before invited her to dinner at a chic
French bistro and offered her a seven-figure signing bonus, but she
refused, in a manner she herself later described as “petulant
and short-sighted.”
    At an interview for
one popular science magazine, she was asked to pose for a photo
shoot. The photographer came into the studio with a skin-tight red
dress. Chal initially balked, but the magazine interviewer talked her
into the dress. It turned out to be the right decision.
    In what seemed to
her like the blink of an eye, she had amassed dozens of offers for
book deals, interviews, cover shoots, corporate advertising for any
digital product under the sun. She accepted them all, ignoring the
advice of her fellow researchers.
    “People see
you as a sellout,” a senior colleague had said. Chal merely
shrugged. Maybe I am.
    In private, she took
all of the money from the promotional offers and gave it to charity.
She never told anybody that she felt guilty, or why. They wouldn’t
have understood. Only her tax accountant knew that Chal Davidson,
despite having the brains to match her beauty, was as penniless as a
grad student.
    Her mom sent her
clippings from the local newspaper whenever it mentioned Chal’s
work. Paper clippings, still–Mrs. Davidson lived in Catalonia,
a non-digital post-Divide country. These Chal kept in her desk
drawer, even after the slips of paper turned yellow, thin, and
finally began to crumble, as all mortal things do.
    ***
    Paper? That was what
she thought, before anything else, when the military man, Gray
Thomas, leaned forward in the van and handed her a binder full of the
stuff. “This is what we need you to review before Phoenix.”
    “You needed to
print this all out?” Chal asked.
    “It’s
for security’s sake,” Lieutenant Johnner said. “No
digital copies are allowed outside of the lab.”
    Chal rolled her eyes
sleepily. The binder was three inches thick; she had already been
awake for twenty-seven hours, not counting the brief period of
sedation. And the sedative must have been an etorphine blend, the way
it knocked her out so quickly. She could already feel the
hydrochloride-induced headache coming over her as she turned to the
first page. There were so many pages.
    And it was all
paper. Overly paranoid, that’s what the military was. As Chal
perused the binder, she felt as though she was back home, visiting
her mom who, despite Chal’s bribes, threats, and plain old
begging had refused to leave West Catalonia.
    Turning quickly to
the second section, she was surprised to see copies of all of her
research on bio-substrate digital intelligence, including her thesis.
She skimmed over them now. Pieces of the text had been underlined,
and certain passages were copied over onto separate pages with dense
technical notes scribbled under them. Chal recognized the notes as
part of the lab processes that were required to apply digital
intelligence into a biological matrix, the results of which had never
been successful in Chal’s lab. At the bottom of one page
someone had signed his