The look on his face was enough to get me to sit down without the sadness that had crept into his voice. He then related a tale to me so fantastic that I thought he must be mad. Dr Vasimo told me about a psychotic killer who had gone on a rampage. The police had cornered the killer and rather than surrender he had taken flight in a vehicle. This was one of the new hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles and was impossibly fast.
The police attempted to control the route of the chase and keep innocent people out of harm’s way. This was more difficult than they expected because the killer was determined to take as many people to the next world with him as he possibly could. While many people died seven remained critically injured and in need of organ transplants to help them survive.
The killer eventually lost control of the vehicle and skidded out of control into a concrete wall. The vehicle exploded and the killer was terribly burned but not yet dead. The killer’s body was still supporting vital organs and so the court ordered the harvesting of the organs from the killer’s body. With new gene therapy techniques the organs could be transplanted into the body of the killer’s victims who had survived without the fear of rejection.
Still the doctor’s had not finished. The brain is the largest internal organ in the body and they had decided to see if they could transplant it. This was a very daring operation and had never been attempted before. The doctors took the entire spine, central nervous system and the brain itself as a single unit. This was then implanted in a robotic body. The central nervous system and its myriad of nerve junctions were interfaced with robotic systems and the brain was supposed to control everything.
At this point I stopped Dr Vasimo and I said, “What has this got to do with me? Was I one of the victims? Please get to the point.”
Dr Vasimo responded saying, “Patience Rodney, patience.” He then continued the story.
The brain could not establish control of the robotic systems. No matter how we made the connections, it seemed that the human brain could not manifest the amount of electrical energy required to power the systems all together. Only some things worked at any given time. Nothing worked together as a single autonomous system like the human body.
Not discouraged at all by their failures the doctors continued to attempt to make the brain power the robotic systems. Eventually they called in the services of a cybernetic engineer who built and designed positronic matrices and a neurosurgeon who specialised in mapping and recording memory and personality engrams.
Together these scientists combined their knowledge and created a method of transferring the engrams to a positronic neural network. The result was a completely robotic structure that contained the mind of a human being.
This was hailed as a significant break-through. No longer would robots require extensive programming and years of training to imitate humans, humans themselves could take on a robotic body and experience something akin to immortality.
“This is all very well and good Dr Vasimo, but what does it have to do with me?” I asked again. I was getting exasperated by now and I was looking for something to smash just to release the tension.
“Very well then Rodney, if you are that impatient, I will tell you. Rodney Farmer, you are the net result of twenty years of research and development. You are the robot I was talking about. You’re the killer whose mind was implanted into the robots neural net.”
I was glad I was sitting down; if I hadn’t been I would have fallen over. “What do you mean? I’m some kind of Frankenstein’s monster. I’m human look at me.”
“No Rodney, you’re not human. Not even close.” I was stunned and before I could stop him he reached behind my right ear and pressed. This time there was no blackness but I found that I could not move anything except for my head. Dr Vasimo reached down to my still exposed chest, I had never quite finished getting dressed, and pressed at various points below my nipples.
To my amazement I saw my whole abdominal wall pop out and slide down the front of my body. Inside where my stomach and other major organs should have been was a metallic chassis with wiring, hydraulics, gyros and other mystifying gadgets. I was glad that I couldn’t move or I would have collapsed on the floor. With the panel at the front of my ‘body’ open I could not deny the proof of my own eyes.
“What have you done to me?” I asked. “Why have you done this to me?”
Dr Vasimo pressed the trigger points again and the panel returned to its original position. He said, “The neurosurgeon was a woman with exceptional talent. She was able to isolate those memories of the killing spree you went on and cut them from existence. You are now a fully functional robot with the ability to serve mankind as efficiently as you once took lives. Consider it the court’s ruling that this is your sentence for your crimes.”
With that he and his coterie got up and left. I was still sitting there unable to move. I wanted to cry but my eyes had no tear ducts.
