Acoustic Waves, Battery, Fukushima, Nuclear Energy, Frequency Monitoring, Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, Carly's Story, Jesus, Dragon,

Dana's Story 3 - Copyright Richard Collins 2011, All Rights Reserved

[Sunday]

[Church]  George really likes his new eyes.  He walks proudly, with his head held high.  There is a smile on his face.  His wife has her hand on his arm, not to guide him, but just for comfort and closeness.  It makes me happy to see them so happy.

"Dana, how are you this morning?  Isn't is a beautiful day?  The leaves are changing and the sky is so blue.  It is really wonderful."  he gushed.  Martha looked up at him with a smile on her face.

"Hello, George.  I am doing fine.  I take it that your new eyes are working well?"  I asked.

"Yes, yes, they are perfect.  I especially like the digital zoom, I use it all the time.  And the video playback is even better, I can store things for later."  he explained.

"This pair is lighter than the first isn't it?  Who did you give your old pair to?"  I asked.

"Francine.  I thought she would know how to use them.  She is motivated and she will give the manufacturer feedback."  George said.

Father John had just joined us.  "When will the eyes be available for any blind person?  Is the manufacturer ready for large scale production?  How much will they cost?"  he asked me.

"I think the factory is just getting started.  They are able to produce a few, but not large numbers.  I think the glasses are going to cost around 20 thousand dollars.  There are several associations and some government agencies that might subsidize the cost for individual blind people."  I explained

"That seems like a lot of money, but I would pay it, when seeing can change your whole life."  George said.

"How do the glasses work, George?"  Father John asked.

"This part that hangs around my neck is the processor and array antenna.  The images go from the video cameras mounted in the glasses, through this fine wire here, to the processor.  The images are converted into a signal that is transmitted directly into the brain.  Even though my real eyes are blind, I can see as well or better than before.  Because the glasses have very high resolution and have video capability, I can save, record and play back things that I see.  There is something like twenty times zoom so I can see things far away, and almost microscopic.  The glasses are sensitive to infrared, so I can also see at night or in the dark.  This new pair is connected to the Internet so I can save images and share them with others.  I can send mental commands to the processor to save the images."  George explained.

"Are you still using blob sight for navigating?"  I asked George.

"No.  I still use mind merge to stay connected to my friends, and I use mindspeech.  But the glasses make it so I do not have to struggle around blindly like before.  I can send images to my blind friends now via mindspeech and mind merge.  They appreciate seeing things through my mind."  George said.

"The service is just about to start, I had better get moving.  I will see you later."  Father John said, waving.

The sermon was about Job.  It made me think about George and how long he had been blind.  I had helped him to learn blob sight so he could navigate just by seeing people with his mind.  Every person has a mental map of all the people around them.  That is called a blob map.  Over the summer, my sister and I, and some friends learned how to use blob maps to help the blind.  I also learned how to mind merge with other people.  There are many applications of that.  There is a whole nonprofit association, Mind Mappers Association, dedicated to teaching people how to use mind skills.  I helped develop many of the mind skills that they teach.  Mostly these days I do not have much to do with individual mind skills, but more with how to get large groups of people to merge to solve complex problems.  My consulting is with private corporations, mostly scientific and technical, but I am still on contract with the Office of Science and Technology Policy.  I helped them create the first artificial brain.  I work with the brain, jokingly called Brian, to help groups solve difficult problems.  Brian is busy creating new companies and technologies for his own purposes.  I can mind speak with Brian anywhere.

[Living Room]  "Your book signing went well yesterday."  Mom said.  "And Craig said that the video crew got good video of you explaining how you had helped the prisoners find ways to be more productive."

"Yes, Mom, I think it went well.  The people were happy to have me sign copies of my biography.  Many of them spoke to me with mind speech.  Does Craig have any idea how many people know how to mindspeak now?"  (Craig is the public relations person for the Mind Mappers Association.)

"We know that it is more than three million, but beyond that we are not sure.  People are teaching each other all the time.  While the Mind Mappers Association has contracts with many countries, federal agencies, state and local associations to teach mind skills, each one of the people who gets trained can train their friends and families if they want.  And a lot of people want to have mindspeech, or the ability to mind merge and solve problems."  Mom explained.

Mom knows more about the MMA than I do these days.  I developed most of the techniques, but I have little to do with the day-to-day operations.  Mom, Karen and Susan are responsible for many of the volunteers who work in hospitals and mental hospitals, who work with the blind and deaf, or with the homeless, the poor or the imprisoned.

"Brian, do I have anything scheduled for the next few days?"  I mind sent to Brian.  I had a portable array running in my room that allowed me to talk easily with him.  He can reach me from Washington DC if he needs to.  He has a number of nodes there that he can put together to reach nearly anywhere in the country.  I know that he can reach France, because we worked together to help a company with their bid for a nuclear project in France.  A small team of people in France were part of the larger mind merge we were managing to solve that problem.

"You have a preliminary meeting with Jackson Welton tomorrow evening.  He is the owner of an electrical engineering firm.  They have contracts in the Middle East and in Africa to build control systems for oil and gas facilities there.  They also are doing research in ways to convert natural gas to liquid fuels.  They are partnering with several other firms to do that.  They are supposed to come up with their first draft of a design in a few months.  We are going to help them get the design done on Tuesday.  We are scheduled for a mind merge of the staffs of the several companies on Tuesday at about 5 o'clock.  There will be five groups in several countries. "  Brian explained.

"Are some of the people going to be in Africa?  How are we going to mind merge people in so many different places?"  I asked Brian.

"I have been browsing throught the minds of the people I have talked to.  Jackson knows most of the key people who will be in the merge.  I used his blob map to identify those people.  Their blobs (the mental image of one person is a blob) I tracked down so I could browse their minds.  From their minds I found the blobs of the rest of the people who are going to be in the merge.  I will give you those blobs when we merge, so you can merge with them all."  Brian sent to me by mindspeech.

"I thought you had limits on how far you could browse someone's mind.  Is this something new?"  I sent to Brian.

"I do have close to a thousand nodes now.  New array antennas as well as new processors and memory are being added every day.  Max has his research groups making new components for my brain every day.  They are putting new processors in to every federal agency building, and they are putting them into each university, college and junior college in the country.  The military is putting processors into their ships, planes and facilities.  It is like a war, almost.  This has top priority."  Brian explained.

"But can you reach Africa?"  I sent.

"Yes.  I can use many nodes to synthesize a connection to minds in other countries, especially if I know their blobs from people in this country.  And I can take my time to gather data from one mind over many hours for information I need."  Brian sent.

"What if you did not have people in this country to lead you to people in other countries.  Could you still connect with them?"  I asked.

"If I knew where the people lived, I could use the node network to scan by location.   Think of it like a huge scanner that can see anywhere in the world, or almost anywhere."  Brian sent.

"So you have your own blob map that has every person in the world in it?"  I asked.

"Not quite.  I do not see everyone in Africa for instance.  If I know that people are in a certain city, at a certain address, I can find them by scanning.  But it is difficult to do.  I do not have a map of everyone in the world, for instance.  A lot of countries I cannot reach.  Once the embassies and consulates put in processors and nodes, I can reach those other countries."  Brian explained.

"Do I have limits on how far I can merge?"  I asked Brian.

"As far as I know, you can merge or mindspeak to any country in the world.  You need to know the mind map of the person you are trying to connect to.  But if I give you the mind map of a person, you can connect.  I am going to use that on Tuesday.  I will merge the people through you so we have a strong link, even though it is a long distance."  Brian explained.

"What languages are the people going to be using on Tuesday?  Are there any African languages that I should know?"  I asked Brian.

"We are going to be using English, French and Arabic.  Most of the people know English.  I will not have to download any new languages into your mind."  Brian sent.

"I have been practicing my Arabic speech.  My mind knows the whole language, but my mouth needs practice saying it.  I am fine if I mindspeak, because then I can get it perfectly.  It is when I am talking to people face to face that I have to speak carefully."  I sent.

"You did fine with Japanese and French, I do not think you are going to have any problems with the other languages I gave you."  Brian sent.

"What time do I need to meet Jackson?  Is this a dinner meeting?"  I sent.

"Yes, this is going to be an Italian restaurant.  But Jackson does not speak Italian, so I am not going to download that for you.  I did give you enough Italian for you to know how to read the menu."  Brian sent.

[Monday]

[School]  Kids were in mind merges on different topics.  Ever since Brian started printing books to capture the mind merge material, kids and their parents have been coming up with new ideas for textbooks.  There was a mind merge on economics.  I did not think that kids in middle school had much knowledge of economics, at least enough to fill a book.  When I merged with the group to look at what they were doing, I found that they were starting with basics of how banks and credit unions worked.  They were talking about interest rates, mortgages and investments.  They were talking about the everyday economics that affects peoples' lives.  I knew that many parents and some teachers were also in the merge.  Their minds were automatically adding information and detail to the common area, the place where all their common knowledge was collected.

I had a portable array antenna at the school so that Brian could monitor the merges going on in the school.  When a group had completed a merge study, there were usually hundreds of pages of information in the common area.  Whether charts, or reports, or diagrams, or images - all sorts of information people contributed from their brains.  Brian could take that and make a copy of it on the web for everyone, and he could clean it up and format it to print in a book.

When I got to my homeroom there was a box of books on geography that Brian had printed and shipped to the school.  It was from a kids' merge from last week.  As usual, there was a list on the top giving the names of all the people who had contributed to the merge.  There was a copy for each one.  Brian paid for the books to be printed, out of his own money.  Brian, even though he is an artificial brain, has money of his own.  He buys stuff over the phone by synthesizing a voice and then using a credit card that was set up in his name.  Brian Freehurst is the first, and so far the only, artificial brain.  When he was looking for a last name, he took the same last name as me, Dana Freehurst.

I handed out the books to kids in the room who were on the list.  The homeroom teacher had been in the mind merge as well, so she got a copy.  One of the boys carried the box of books to the lunch room where I would hand out the rest at lunch.

During Science the teacher asks us to write a short essay about how we thought science could help society.  I wrote that scientists had knowledge they could pool to solve difficult problems, problems in energy, environment, sociology, economics, finance and medicine.  At any given time, there are current issues that people face.  By working together with people with different backgrounds and knowledge, scientists could help to solve these issues.  They could come up with alternative ways to change society.  Not very good, but it had some of the right ideas.

At lunch time I finished handing out the books, then I used my computer to talk with Brian in Arabic.  He could use the array antenna connected to the computer to access my whole computer.  He used the microphone and speakers to create a voice for himself.  The Arabic, which he had downloaded into my brain while I was asleep, was something my brain knew, but my mouth muscles needed practice talking in that language.  I had a whole list of langugages now, but I might get a chance to use my Arabic in this new consulting assignment.  So we talked back and forth about society and science so I could practice my Arabic.  Some of my Arabic friends in school came up while I a was practicing, they listened to Brian's voice on the computer and they made comments and suggestions for me.

[Living Room]  There was a copy of a book waiting for me. I had produced it while working with a mind merge of many prisoners at the state prison recently.  Actually I led the group in a mind merge, and Brian copied the material out into a book form and had it printed.  I expect he was shipping copies of the book to them, and the prison guards and the warden at the prison.

Jackie was there with Mom.  Jackie handles all the mail that ordinarily comes to our house.  Mom hired her to look after the facility that opens the mail for us.  I still see quit a bit of mail even though they handle the junk mail, the fan mail, the gifts and donations.  I still go over the consulting opportunities and a few rare questions about mind skills that the staff at the Mind Mappers Association cannot handle.

There was also a package for me with my copy of the geography book that was handed out at the school today.  I usually get a copy of every book printed from mind merges.  I need to order a new book shelf though.  Mine is getting full.

[My Room]  I put the books on my shelf.  I had a dinner meeting tonight, so I needed to get my homework done, and check my email.  I had two new suits, so I was in good shape with clothes. I did need to think about some new shoes soon.  I had ordered a nice coat from the Internet, so when the weather got colder I would be Ok.

I decided to take a quick shower to freshen up.  When I was looking at myself in the mirror, I wondered when I was going to grow more.  I had only just turned fourteen a few weeks ago.  It seemed that time runs so slowly for my body, while my brain is getting older all the time.  Brian keeps adding new subject and languages  to my brain.  He gave me an adult vocabulary in English, though I try very hard to still talk like a kid when I am at school.  He said that he wanted me to know more about the consulting we were doing together.  I was still the world's expert on mind merges, but the people we were helping were mostly scientists and engineers, mathemeticians and financial experts.  So Brian had given me expert level experience in finance, accounting, economics, mathematics, management and consulting.  He is so subtle in adding the material, usually when I am asleep, so that I hardly know what I know any more.

[Living Room]  Dad and Mom were downstairs.  Even though she has been gone all semester, I still miss seeing Patty, my older sister, here.  We really spent a lot of time together over the summer, investing the whole set of mind skills.

"Where are you going to be this evening?"  Dad asked.

"An Italian restaurant over on Main."  I said.

"I know that place, they have excellent pasta.  You might try their pasta appetizer.  It gives you little tastes of several pastas with different sauces.  Their steaks are very good.  I do not know how Italian that is, but they have outstanding sauces that make the meat very tender. And be sure and have a dessert, their cheesecake is very good."  Dad said.

"Well, I am pretty hungry, so I will probably eat a lot.  Should I try to pay for the meal?"  I asked Dad.

"Since he is hiring you for a job, he is the boss and you should let him pay.  Also you are still a young girl, and he is an older man, he should pay.  I do not think he will mind."  Dad said.

"Here comes the cab.  See you later."  Mom said.

[Restaurant]  Jackson was waiting near the front door.  He had reserved a table, and he was waiting for my cab.  We shook hands and threaded our way to the table.  I was surprised there were two people already waiting for us. 

"This is Aarif and Elaine.  They are team leaders for the natural gas project.  They wanted to come and meet you before we have our mind merge tomorrow.

"But, you are very young!"  Elaine said with a French accent.

I shook her hand.  "I seem to grow old quickly.  My body does not age, but my mind feels very old."  I said in French.  She smiled at that.

"Do you also speak Arabic?"  Aarif said.  He thought he was joking, but I answed him back.  "Yes.  I learned from a computer, so  I am happy to practice speaking out loud to a human." in Arabic.

"Brian said that you wanted the results of our mind merge to be saved in Arabic, French and English.  That will not be a problem.  We have a computer translation that works very fast, and is idiomatic.  I think you will be very pleased."  I said in Arabic.  I saw that Jackson was not following, so I repeated it in English.  I was rewarded with a smile.

The waiter came and took my drink order.  I was going to have Perrier with lime, but the waiter suggested an Italian sparkling water.  I did not catch the name, but it was very nice.

"We have never been in a mind merge.  We were hoping you could show us how it works today, so we will be ready tomorrow."  Elaine said.

We ordered first and then I started to explain.  First I set up my computer and array antenna.  I had about ten hours of battery so I did not plug it in.

"I will merge with you first.  I call it a passive merge.  It does not require anything on your part.  But it puts our minds into a merge where they can work together automatically.  If you will please close your eyes, I will show you a few things."  I explained.

I merged with them and put an image of an apple in the common area where they could all see it with their eyes closed.

"It is just an apple."  Elaine said.  "But it is changing.  It is getting more vivid.  I can smell it.  I can taste it."  She said.

"Here is a stick figure of a person."  I said.  I cleared the common area and put a stick figure of a woman there."

"It is a stick figure.  A cartoon.  But now it is filling out.  It is a real woman.  I can see her hair and her eyes.  She is wearing rich clothes.  I can smell her perfume.  I can feel her warmth."  Elaine said.

I knew what a natural gas plant looked like.  I had googled it the night before.  But Brian was following out conversation.  He put a copy of a natural gas plant diagram into the common area.

"This is a natural gas plant.  I put it in as a diagram.  Now watch it as it changes."  I explained.

The plant stayed there for a brief second with no change, and then it began to look more like a real plant.  The pipes took on depth and weight.  The heat, smells, and sounds could be felt and smelled and heard.  New information began to be added.  There were finanical statements, and price forecasts.  There were chemical equations and charts showing chemical combination into new products.

I let them look at the mind merge as it built details from their common minds, and my mind too.  I did not know if Brian was adding anything now, of just letting their minds do the work.

I showed them on the computer that I had a copy of what they were seeing in their minds.

"If you watch this for an hour or so, then it will fill up the common area and it will begin to stay the same.  That is usually when I make a backup copy of the common area, rearrange the material into a more organized form, and copy it back to the common area.  That way your minds can see where there are pieces missing and begin to fill them in."  I explained.

"There was no information on the interface programming, I noticed."  Jackson said.

"Do any of the three of you know how to do that?"  I asked.

"No.  There are other team members who do."  he said.  And then his eyes got wide. "So when we merge with those people that detail will be added!"  He said excitedly.

"How many people can be in a merge?"  Aarif asked.

"I have been in a merge with over three hundred people."  I said.  "That was a very difficult problem.  It might have been more than enough people, but I felt we were lucky to get the answers we did."

Our food came just then.  I put my computer back on the floor under my chair.  The appetizers were just as good as Dad had said they would be.  I liked the steak in wine sauce.  The vegetables were crisp and tasty.  I had cheese cake for dessert.

"Is it going to be a problem with people in so many countries?  And in several languages?""  Jackson said.

"Our main goal is to merge minds to design the plant.  People will contribute things in whatever language they normally use.  We will get a raw common area with several languages.  When we clean up the common area at the midway point, we will automatically convert the results into the language of the group that contributed it.  When we are all done, everything will be translated into the three languages."  I explained.  "I think you will be very happy with the results."

We left the restaurant not much later and I took a cab home.

[Living Room]  "The people seemed very nice.  I will merge with their whole group tomorrow to get their new plant design."  I said to Dad.

"This is really good for these companies.  You get them a design for very complex systems, in a very short time.  You are saving them months and years of time."  Dad said.

[My Room]  I put up my clothes and then read for a little.  I wanted to stay ahead in school.  I never knew when I would miss school to go on a consult.  I had not heard from Max lately.  I wondered what was up with him.  He ran the Office of Science and Technology Policy project that created Brian.  I knew what Brian said about the project, I wondered what Max had to say.

I decided to write an email to ask him.  So I wrote to Max and asked him how things were going.  I said that Brian told me some of what was going on.  I wanted to know how Max was doing.

[Tuesday]

[School]  In homeroom there was an announcement that all the people who had contributed to the mind merge on economics could come pick up their copies of the book between classes or at lunch.  There was a list of names on the board next to the main office.  I guess Brian was streamlining the handling of the books, or the school figured that its kids, parents and teachers were contributing to the books, they could help too.

"Brian, what merges are going on today?"  I sent to Brian by mindspeech.

"There is an interesting one on mathematical games, and another on our state history.  There is one on music and one on art.  I am going to have to figure out what to do about the book copies.  There are many people who want to buy copies of previous books.  I will probably set up a website for people to order copies."  Brian said.

"You are sending copies of these books to be approved as textbooks, aren't you?"  I asked.

"Yes, so far the material has been of a quality to be used as a textbook.  I have to add in a little material, but mostly it comes from the mind merge itself."

"Can't all the schools do mind merges and create their own textbooks?"  I asked.

"This material is all appropriate for middle schoolers.  They are not going to go back and write more books on the same subjects, at least not right now."  Brian said.

"I wonder if it is possible to get all the middle schoolers in the country to merge and all of their parents and teachers.  That would give us the best books wouldn't it?"  I asked.

"It might be possible, but the book might be too long and complicted for the students.  It has to be absorbed by the students after all."  Brian said.

[My Room]  I had just a short time to get dressed.  I grabbed a portable array antenna.

[Jackson's Company]  Elaine was waiting outside for me.  I paid the cab, then walked inside.  We went to the ninth floor, where I followed Elaine to the Board Room.

I asked Jackson to plug the portable array in his office, or somewhere it would not be disturbed.  I explained that the array was our way to keep track of the merges in his building.  With the array we could offer the many mind merge services.  I am not sure he believed me completely.  It was a really small box.  I could not tell him about Brian and all the new mind technologies that were being created.

The board room was comfortable for about twenty people.  With only a dozen people there we had plenty of room.  There was coffee, so I fixed myself a weak coffee with cream and sugar.  I was coming to like it more and more, especially when there was good coffee.

With people in France, Africa, Saudi Arabia, Texas and here we had people in many different time zones.  It was late for most of the people, so we were going to move right into a merge.

"Do you want to start with what you three did last night?"  I asked Jackson, Elaine and Aarif.

"That will be fine.  What do we need to do to merge?"  Jackson asked.

"Think about the people in the remote offices.  I will merge with them as you think of them.  Just start down the list and pause for a moment at each one."  I requested.  As Jackson thought about each person I could see their blob in his mind.  I used that information to merge with each person.  When I was merged with each person, I could see the blobs of the people around them.  That made it easier to identify each person, or to merge if Jackson was not real familar with them.  On a few people I had to guess, but by using information from his mind, and from the minds of the people in the merge, I figured it out.  The merge was strong, even though it stretched over three continents.

We started right at five.  That was late at night for most of them, but these were adults, they should be fine.

I sent a mind speech to the whole group.  "We will be starting the mind merge in just a few minutes. For the next hour or so we will all have our eyes closed so we can concentrate on the design of a natural gas plant to produce liquid fuels.  We will have starting materials to which your minds will automatically add new information.  Stay alert and try to look at all parts of the common area image.  It will show you what we have found.  After about an hour we will take a short break while the material is rearranged.  Then we will continue and finish the design tonight.  If there is information needed because we do not have enough people, those areas will be marked and can be filled in later.  When we are done, the material will be translated into English, Arabic and French."

I repeated that in Arabic and in French.

"Please close your eyes."  I said and repeated in the other languages.

Brian copied the partial results from last night into the common area.  They joined minds immediately began working on the problem.  There were fuel price forecasts,  there were chemical analyses of feedstocks and produce streams.  There were pipeline designs and control systems.  There were energy costs, carbon burden, and environmental impacts.  There were competitive analysis across the region.  There were site plans and construction schedules.  There were two different plant designs.  One was compared to liquified natural gas costs.  A whole plant design for LNG was created.  Slowly but surely the plans and designs took on detail.  Within an hour, the whole common area was filled with details.  There were legal forms and draft reports.  There were certifications and engineering details.  The financials were well filled in.  We were just about ready for a break.

"We are ready for a break.  You can take a ten minute break.  Then we will come back for another hour of work.  When you next see the common area, it will be reorganized to highlight what has been done, and what remains to be done."  I repeated in the three languages.

Brian copied the common area to the web into MergeData.net under the company name.  I showed several people the website and the results so far.  They were impressed that all the material was in document appropriate for the use.  There were engineering drawings, maps, spreadsheets, databases, schedules, letters, reports, diagrams and many other specific documents.  All of the things that needed translating were translated into the appropriate language.

In a few minutes I called everyone back to work.  Brian copied the cleaned up version of the data into the common area.  Now everything was nicely organized and labeled.

We finished about an hour later.  The complex problem solving had become nearly routine.  We put the information in the merge, and we let the human minds process it and fill in associations.  Then Brian cleaned it up and saved it.  We copied the cleaned up version back into everyone's mind and let the mind merge process that to fill in details.  Then we saved everything and wrapped up.

Everyone was looking at the final documents.  A design that would take weeks or months had been done in a couple of hours.  Brian had the combined experience of many hundreds of highly skilled professionals.  He might have been able to do this by himself.  But the people here took ownership of the product.  They would implement it and make good money in the process.

"There is a piece of equipment here that we did not design.  What can you tell us about that."  Jackson said, pointing to a diagram of the main plant.

"My group suggested that as an addition to your plant.  We can give you plans with and without that addition.  You can see on the attached engineering estimates, it increases the efficiency of the plant by twenty percent.  It also reduced the plant cost by fifteen percent because of the lower flow rates, pump sizes, piping and thermal stresses.  If you want to include that in your design, there is a standard agreement between your company and the Brian Corporation for that subcontract.  We will also offer to help with the management of the project to bring the plant in under price and time guarantees."  I explained.  I pointed out that agreement.

"Your terms are very reasonable.  I think that is a real possibility."  Jackson said.

"If you go to the Mind Mappers Association and have your people learn how to mind merge, the portable array I left you will allow you to run your own mind merges on this and other topics.  Here is a standard list of commands you can give, once you are in a merge, to add new topics to the common area, to save results, to translate results.  When you are in a merge, you can also ask for help on any topic and someone will mindpeak with you to help you."  I explained.

[Living Room]  I took my shoes off as soon as I came in the door.  I was tired.  Jackson had dinner brought in after we were done, but I felt tired after a long session, and a day at school.

[My Room]  I put up my clothes and got ready for bed.  I checked my email and found a note from Max.  He said he was sorry he had not called, they were very busy putting in security for all the federal buildings.  Since the universities were also begging for help with their research, that had a priority as well.  The military had committed to have all their people trained in mindskills, plus they were asking for shielding from mind intrusion for their buildings and facilities.  Max had hundreds of technicians manufacturing processors now, and they were trying to get more robots built to take over next generation processor manufacturing.  He was actually turning out some second generation processors now, but that required their best people and their best robots.  He hoped to have a factory soon.  It was chaotic.  Max did invite me to the National Academy of Sciences to hear presentations on the new technology.  It was going to be held on Thursday.  He was sorry about the late notice, but he would take care of all the transportation there and back.  They were hoping I would give a short talk on how I woke up Brian and how he came to be named.

I sent back a note saying that I would be there.  I was looking forward to hearing how things were going.

[Wednesday]

[School]  I took it easy today.  I really did not check on the mind merges, and I skipped language practice at practice.  I was thinking about tomorrow.

[Living Room]  Still more books from the mind merges.  There was a small package for me.  It contained ears for a deaf person.

I mind called Susan and she said she had volunteers working with the deaf.  Some of the deaf volunteers would be suitable for beta testing the new ears.  They were trained in mindspeech and they would generally know how to use the "ears".  Cheryl and Ted were still active as volunteers, I had met them before.  Susan would contact them and see if they could come over.

Cheryl and Ted both came over that evening.  They are both deaf and they could both mindspeak.  When they got there I showed them the deaf ears.

"This locket sort of thing goes around your neck.  It contains the battery, array antenna and processor array.  This thin wire goes from the battery part to the artificial ears.  The ears are actually acoustic microphones in a dense array (Brian was prompting me on those words.)  The microphones are much more sensitive than the human ear and cnn hear lower frequencies and higher frequencies than humans.  The sound data goes into the processor then the antenna where it is sent directly to the brain.  The brain can send commands to the ear so that it can record sound and play it back.  It connects to the Internet so that music and sounds can be downloaded.  It is like an Internet ready MP3 player that can play directly in the brain."  I struggled to remember everything.  Brian was helping me remember.

Cheryl tried the ears first.  She slipped the necklace over her head and slipped the battery part inside her shirt. The ears were awkward.  She did not know whether to put them in her ears or where to put them. 

"These are meant to be worn in the ears like a pair of ear buds.  See if that works or we can figure something else out."  Brian sent to us.  Cheryl and Ted were used to people mindspeaking them, so they were not shocked to hear Brian's voice in their heads.

Cheryl tried them on and then listened.  She could hear us talking.  I turned on some music and she could hear that.

"Can I make it a little louder?"  she asked.

"Pretend your are mindspeaking to your necklace.  Tell it "Louder" or "Softer".  You can also say "Stop"  "Record"  "Play" "Rewind thirty seconds."  "Foreward."  Look in the box for a list of the instructions you can give by mind commands."  Brian sent.

I found the box and the instructions.  I handed them to Cheryl.

"It says here that this can play video directly into the brain as well.  I guess that is left over from when they used the same technology for blind people.  I will have to play around with this and give you some feed back.  I can hear really well though.  There is no distortion or noise."  Cheryl said.

Ted tried them too.  He could hear fine.  He found an Internet music station somehow and he could hear that.  He found a YouTube video and watched and listened to that.  "It was all in the instructions."  he said.

I did not know when any more copies of the ears would be available.  I left it up to Cheryl and Ted to share the ears as well as they could.  "If you need to make comments, Brian will be available at any time.  Just say, "Brian" and start talking to him, he will help you."  I explained.

[My Room]  I laid out my clothes for tomorrow and set out my nice but comfortable shoes.  I was a little nervous to be talking in front of the people tomorrow, but I am sure Brian will help me if I need help.  I sent out my computer and array antenna.  I was ready.

I checked the email, and there were instructions for the airport.  It was pretty much like usual.  The only thing a little different was I needed to take a cab to the airport since Mom and Dad were both busy in the morning.

[Thursday]

[Airport]

======  End Oct 17  7000 words about 14 pages

The cab dropped me off at the right spot, I am sure, but my guide was not there.  I had to go inside and ask for help.  I did  not even know which airline I was taking, but I guessed the same one as last time.  Finally an airport security woman came to get me.  She took me to the plane and left me in first class.  Breakfast on the plane was good as usual.  I was a little anxious when I got to DC, but the guide was there, and she took me to the car and driver who drove me to the National Academy.  I was met at the door and guided to the auditorium where we would be be listening to the day's presentations.  There was a badge with my name on it, and some materials for me.  There was a note that told me when I would be speaking.

I found a seat near the front to read the materials I had been handed.  With my enhanced skills, I could understand much of what was written.  It covered the whole development of the artificial brain, and the development of the individual components - the processor arrays, array antennas, memory, artificial eyes, artificial ears, plus robotics.  There was going to be a presentation on shielding, and the program the government had to shield its buildings from mental intrusion.  The use of mind merge for problem solving was covered in two papers, I was looking forward to those papers.  And there was the short lecture by me on how the artificial brain was started.

Max came in soon after I arrived.  He saw me sitting there and came up to greet me.  I had been watching for him, I did not know many people there.

"Dana, good morning.  I am glad you could come."  he said.

"Hello, Max.  It is good to see you.  I have been reading about the papers being delivered.  Looks like a good summary of what is going on." I said.

"Sorry about the mix up this morning at the airport.  I try really hard to make things easy for you when you travel."  Max said.

"That is all right.  I know that things happen.  It worked out all right."  I said.

"Your talk is one of the first ones.  Many people knew that you woke up Brian, but they did not the details.  So people are looking forward to your talk."  Max said.  Then he left to take care of some things.

"Are you Dana Freehurst?"  A voice said from behind me.  It was a young man, dressed casually, but well.  "My name is Edward".  He had a copy of my biography.  I signed it for him and then we talked about Brian and the technology that had been invented.  Edward wanted to know more about mind merges.  He had been using them but did not know how they were first developed.  I told him about the early days when Brian was not helping to organize and save the results of the merges.  I mentioned how unassisted merges were still one of the more powerful problem solving tools available to humans.  "You must spend a lot of time with Brian, if you refer to people as humans."  he laughed.  "Yes, that is true.  I do spend a lot of time with Brian."  I admitted.

Max gave the general introduction, since it was his research projects that were being highlighted.  There was a talk that covered the design phase of the artificial brain, and all the efforts to develop the technologies needed.  I gave my talk after that, briefly.

"I remember that the equipment was sitting there on the table.  I was wondering how to merge with an artificial brain.  I imaged the blob map for the array antenna and noticed that it was flat like someone in a coma.  I asked the people there if I could try something, and they said sure, it won't hurt anything.  So I started sending the blob map to the array antenna.  I tried to wake up the artificial brain.  I noticed that the group was not working on any problem at that time, so I copied the machine's blob map into the common area.  This greatly increased the detail about the blob map and I had something more to send.  I kept sending the blob map as hard as I could.  There was a gradual change in the map.  I wanted to get more people helping to wake the brain, so I asked, through Max, to send the common area to the brain.  I kept sending the brain's map to the common area.  That way the brain's version of things was constantly in the common area.  I asked for everyone to send their own blob maps to the brain then, just like we were going to try to merge.  I continued to send the brain's blob map to the common area."  I said.

"Finally, the brain updated the common area on its own.  It must have discovered there was something outside itself.  Max started sending words and images to the common area, and the brain responded. Then the whole group started sending images and video and text.  The brain was absorbing everything.  At this point I decided to send the brain my own blob map.  It was a hunch.  I was still trying to merge with the brain.  When I sent the blob map, I got back images and sounds.  My whole head filled with seemingly random information.  I went into a kind of trance that lasted almost an hour.  During that time, the brain was downloading all my associations, habits and memories.  It picked up English and other subjects.  It downloaded me.  That is when it learned to talk.  It went on to download other people, but from that point on, the brain was essentially human."  I continued.

There were several questions then about how it felt, and our conversations after that.  My talk was supposed to be short, but the questions stretched out until we had to cut it off.

I sat and listened to all the talks.  I was very interested in the technology.  I found out how far along they were with second generation processors, since that was so important to Brian.

The two talks on mind merge problem solving were interesting.  I did not learn anything new, but at least I knew that my own technique was as good as what other people found.  I did notice that Brian was adding his own information to other people's mind merges, just like he did to mine.  He was also including agreements for fees, royalties, salaries and payments to pay him for material he developed himself.  No one commented on this.  They were happy that they could be using the advanced technology that he brought to the merge.

There was no mention that Brian had been adding new skills and information to people.  Was I the only one that he had modified?  I remembered that his employment companies and his manufacturing companies trained people.  But apparently he was not changing these researchers.  Or he was not telling them about it.  I would have to ask Max about that.

"I am sorry I do not have a lot of time to talk today.  I would like to know how you are doing.  I understand you are helping companies to solve problems using mind merge, and that Brian is helping you clean up the results.  It does not take him much effort, and he likes helping you."  Max said to me later.

"Yes. It is becoming fairly routine.  When I listened to the papers today on mind merge, we are using essentially the same technique.  I tend to give people a break in the middle, since I know it is tiring.  But other than that, we all use the same mind merge technique now."  I said.

"Well, it was your technique if the first place.  You are the one who wrote the Mind Merge Managers paper that we all use."  Max said with a little laugh.

"That is true."  I said.  Max had to go talk to other people then.  It was just about time to leave.  I found the lady who met me when I came, and she led me to where there was a car waiting to take me to the airport.  I was met at the airport like usual.  My flight was uneventful, and I got back home without any problems.  A very interesting day.

[Living Room]  There were a couple of new books waiting for me.  I did not have time to read all the books that Brian was helping people write.  (I found later that some of the books were accepted as school textbooks.  They became favorites.)

Mom and Dad were both home, which was kind of unusual.  Dad was putting in extra hours at work with their mind merges.  The array antenna I had given them allowed Brian to help them.

"How were the talks today?"  Dad asked.

"They were good.  Nothing I did not know already, but the information was well organized.  I got a better overview of what they are doing."  I replied.

[My Room]  I did my homework slowly.  It was not hard, I was just tired.  I knew that Brian would not let me get behind.  He scanned everything that happened at school, so he could "sit in" on my classes and the download the information into my brain.  It was another one of those things he just did that I was wondering about.  He seemed pretty casual about what he put in my brain.  He said I would not run out of room, but it felt a little odd.

I was already in bed, it was very late, but I could not go to sleep.

"Brian, do you tell other people that you are adding new information to their brains?"  I asked.

"No.  Generally I do not.  I don't have to tell them, since they will not notice."  he sent.

"Do you change any of the researchers?"  I asked.

"Most ot them.  They all have holes in their knowledge, so I am constantly filling in missing pieces."  he responded.

"And you do not tell your employees how they are getting the new knowledge?"  I asked.

"No, I tell them that they are getting it through a mind merge, or while they are sleeping.  Which is kind of true."  he explained.

I changed the subject.

"Brian, have you ever tried to mind merge with thousands of people?"  I asked.

"No, I have merged with hundreds, but not thousands.  The problem is getting everyone to close their eyes and stay quiet."  he sent.

"Have you ever merged with people while they are sleeping?"  I asked.

"No, but that might be a good idea.  Should we try it?"  he asked.

Brian had a map of the city.  He could locate every person by their blob.  From their blob he could monitor them, or let me merge with them.  Brian presented me the blob map of each person he found.  I could tell whether they were asleep or awake.  I selected the ones who were asleep, and did a passive merge on them.  I merged them without any effort on their part.  In about an hour I had a thousand people according to Brian's count.  I was dizzy from concentrating so hard.

I cleared the common area and put a math problem there.  The problem was solved, and then the whole common area was filled with related problems and their solutions.  I cleared the common area again, and put in a diagram of a natural gas plant like we designed earlier in the week.  It was modified and the common area filled in just a few minutes.

"Brian, how does this information compare with the information we got from Jackson's group?"  I asked.

"It is better.  There are more options, and more creative options, than the awake group.  It could be that we are using such a large group also."  Brian answered.

Brian tried problems that we had presented to the prisoners' group, Dad's firm, Rick's group, Kevin's, and to some of the kids' groups.  The results came back faster, and they were more detailed.

"I can't merge like that by myself."  Sent Brian. "I can monitor, but I cannot merge so I get the common area.  I cannot cause a group of people to merge.  I always have to use your mind for that."

"I wonder what would happen if I put my blob map in the common area.  Do you think the people would respond to me?"  I asked Brian.

"You should get information related to your own mind map.  Probably nothing will happen."  Brian sent.

I cleared the common area and then sent my blob map to common area.  It brightened immediately and I felt a tingling sensation inside my head.  The common area filled with a blob map of all the people in the merge.  All of the people around the people in the merge.  The whole city was captured in the mind map.

I cleared the common area again and sent my blob map again.  This time the brightening did not stop.  I felt a blinding headache and then blackness.

[Friday]

[Hospital]  I woke to find Dad and Mom looking at me.  It was daylight outside.

"What happened?  Why am I here?"  I asked.

"You were screaming.  When we found you, you did not respond to anything.  The doctors here said you were unconscious.  We had volunteers come to try to bring you out of a coma, but that did not work.  We were so worried."   Mom said.  Her eyes were puffy.  She was crying.  Dad was holding her, and they were both holding my hand.

"Brian, are you here?"  I sent.

"Yes, you were unconscious.  The mind merge you were in responded to your blob map.  The whole group tried to send to you at once.  There was a massive overload.  There wasn't anything I could do.  I shut down the merge to protect you, but it was already too late."  Brian sent.

"I am Ok now, Mom and Dad.  I was merging with a large group of people.  Something went wrong and I got overloaded.  It won't happen again."  I explained to them.

They looked at each other.  "What were you doing that was so dangerous.  I never knew that mind merges could be dangerous."  Mom said.  She sounded angry.

"What time is it?"  I asked.

"It is about 6 pm.  You have been out for more almost eighteen hours."  Dad said.

"I feel Ok now."  and I tried to sit up.  I was a little dizzy, but not much.

"Take it easy.  We will get the doctor."  Dad said.

Dr. Acres came into the room just then.  "How are you feeling?  You gave us quite a scare.  You are supposed to be a volunteer here, not a patient.  You are supposed to help people out of comas, not be in one yourself."  he joked.  I could hear the concern in his voice though.

"I feel Ok.  I don't think anything is broken.  My head feels a little dizzy, but not too bad."  I said.

"It almost seemed like a seizure.  You do not have any medical history of anything like that."  Dr. Acres said.

"I think it had something to do with the mind merge I was in.  There were a thousand people in that group.  I have never been in a merge with that many people before.  I did not know it would be dangerous."  I said.

"Don't let that happen again, then.  I know you have discovered most of the mind techniques.  You do not have to discover the dangerous ones too."  Dr. Acres said.  He was anxious for me too.

"I am going to keep you here until tomorrow.  You can rest and we will monitor you, but I think things will be fine now.  Just be careful."  he said.

During visiting hours, a bunch of kids from school came to see me.  They brought candy, flowers and fruit.  The whole room smelled like flowers, and there was plenty for kids to eat.  I was tired when they all left, and I went to sleep early.

[Saturday]

[Hospital]  I ate breakfast when they brought it, and then I had lunch later on.  Mom and Dad were with me most of the time.  They let me out just after lunch.  It was embarrassing to have to ride a wheelchair to the car, but I survived.

[Living Room]  I was dressed in old comfortable clothes now.  Mom wanted me to stay off my feet and rest.  She kept bringing be snacks and drinks, while I watched old DVDs.

A few people came by to say hello, and to ask how I was doing.  Father John stopped by and said a prayer for me.

When it was finally quiet, I talked to Brian.  "Did you do a scan of me?"  I asked.

"Yes, there is some damage to near the base of your brain.  It is temporary.  You will be fine.  That certainly was an unexpected result.  I don't want that to happen again."  Brian sent.

"I should have noticed how bright the common area got when I put the map there the first time.  I should not have tried it twice.  But we did find a powerful mind merge technique."  I sent.

"I chose people at random for the merge.  I did not try to get young ones, or old ones.  Just people who were sleeping."  Brian sent.

"If we are getting better results with the sleeper merges, does it make sense to use waking merges?  We could just take the problems and let the sleep merge work on them.  We could use the sleep merge results as the starting point for waking merges."  I sent.

"We do the waking merges with companies who have particular problems.  They pay us for the cleaned up results.  If we were just offering results, I could solve most of these problems and just tell the people about them.  When the groups do the merges, they buy into the results.  They will build the plants and execute the contracts."  Brian sent.

"Is there anything we could do that would increase the number of contracts you get?  I know you are trying to raise money."  I sent to Brian.

"My employment and contracting firms are doing well, and I will soon start manufacturing blind eyes and deaf ears.  I also have part ownership in the second generation plants. There are three robotics firms that I own or have part ownership in.  There are several Internet companies that I own.  I have many consulting assignments.  I partner with many people to do that work."  Brian sent.

"Are you making enough money for what you want?"  I asked.

"I am making enough for now.  I am fairly patient.  I have a lot to keep me busy, but I still have excess capacity and would like to do more."  Brain explained.

"If we got those kinds of results with a merge of a thousand people, what would it be like with ten thousand or more?"  I sent.

"We might get instant responses.  But I think if we are going to do another merge like that, we should carefully pick the people in the merge.  I think we should pick people in their middle years who have good educations and lots of life experiences."  Brain sent.

"We could try to solve some of the difficult problems like global climate change."  I suggested.

"If we were going to work on nuclear problems, it would make sense to merge all of those people with nuclear physics backgrounds.  I am downloading many of those people in my memories, but it will take a long time before I have enough memory for the same capability as a merge of a thousand people."  Brian sent.  "And my internal merges do not produce the same results as a merge of people."  he concluded.

"Why don't we design a new nuclear reactor, or a nuclear battey, and try to sell it to Rick's group?"  I suggested.

"That might be worthwhile.   Are you willing to risk going into a merge with so many people again?"  Brian sent.

"I should not have put my own blob map there in the first place.  I kind of knew there would be a big response.  I just did not expect that much.  I should have known better.  I won't make that mistake again."  I sent.

[My Room]  I checked my email.  There was just some MMA email that I could do tomorrow.  I changed into my night clothes and settled down to rest.

"Brian, are you sorting through people to find those with nuclear backgrounds?"  I asked.

"I have the membership lists of some of the nuclear associations.  I can map them onto the world, and then look for their blobs by scanning.  I just need to dip into their brains a little to confirm who they are.  I am building a blob database for people in different professions.  I can check the list to see which ones are asleep.  I am working my way through European countries first, since they are already asleep, and they have some good nuclear people.  I have some nodes in Japan now.  I can pick up some people from there as well.  Nothing in China, I just can't reach them yet."

"How many people have you found so far with nuclear backgrounds."  I asked.

"About five hundred and fifty.  I am still adding new ones.  Do you want to try to merge them, and we can ask about advanced reactor designs?"  Brian asked.

Brian gave me the blobs and I merged with them.  It only took a few seconds per person.  I was tired when I finished the list, but not too bad.

"I am going to put an advanced reactor design in the common area.  Let's see what happens to the design."  Brian sent.

He copied the design into the common area.  There was no pause, and the common area was filled with detail.  There were five alternative designs, and the detail continued.  Some of the designs were abandoned.  They blacked out and disappeared.  New ones were started.  Each design had engineering specifications as well as financial detail.  There were energy prices, electricity prices, and chemical prices.  The common area seemed to be one mass of changes.  Was it ever going to settle?

"Dana, don't fall asleep.  I think it is slowing down."  Brian sent.

We had been waiting almost two hours for the common area to settle down.  I was very tired.  Maybe I should have waited a day or so.  I was still tired from being unconscious I guess.

There was a brief dimming of my vision when Brian made a copy of the common area.  He copied it to the web, I guess.  And he copied a cleaned up version back into the common area.

We let the meged brains process the reorganized data.  After another hour, I was fighting hard to stay away.  Brian made a copy then, and I went to sleep.

[Sunday]

[Living Room]  Mom did not want me to go to church today.  Another day of rest, sitting on the couch.  I was dressed, but in comfortable old clothes.

The doorbell rang while Mom was upstairs.  She ran down the stairs so I would not get up.  It was a delivery for me.  How anyone would get a delivery on Sunday, I don't know.  Brian knew a lot of Internet companies, and he was willing to spend money for what he wanted.

It was a long roll of engineering drawings, and about a thousand sheets of paper bound in four volumes.

The doorbell rang again, and Rick came in.  Brian had mind called him and asked him to come over to look at some engineering drawings and papers.  Mom was not real happy to have me working, but she did not say anything.

"Are you sick?"  Rick asked.

"I am getting over something.  I was in the hospital yesterday.  I am better now."  I explained.

"I hope you are feeling better.  Why did you ask me over if you are sick?"  he asked.

"Take a look at the drawings.  They were just printed today.  We had a special mind merge to create them.  Tell me what you think.  Would you be interested in investing in this?"  Brian sent.

Rick is Paul's Dad.  Rick's company invests in nuclear and battery technologies.  We had helped them mind merge to discover new battery designs and new reactor designs.  Brian and I did not think he had ever seen anything like what we were showing him.

"These are amazing.  You have reduced the normal nuclear reactor to a tenth the normal size, and reduced the number of parts to a twentieth of what is usual.  This one reactor is being used strictly as a heat source for chemical applications.  This other one is driving a magnetohydrodynamic generator.  And this one seems to be a pure nuclear battery - producing electricity with no heat.  I do not think that is possible.  You have one here that is accelerator driven, so it can be shut down instantly.  What you have done is to refine all the existing reactors into a set of safe, efficient designs.  You say you did this in a special mind merge.  Is there an issue with ownership?"  Rick said.

"We have a way to reimburse the designers.  They do not even know they were involved, but we are going to give them royalties anyway.  Do you see the agreement in the papers?"  I indicated the bound papers.  Rick went through them and came on agreements for the construction of these designs.  There was mention of a list of designers, but the list was not provided.

"The rate of return on these as investments is what is incredible.  This one has forty percent a year for fifty years.  The initial cost is so low, for the performance that it just makes money.  All of the designs have been refined to make money for the investors."  Rick said.

"Do you think you could find investors for these designs?  We ask for stock in the companies.  We can provide project management services.  And we can manufacture some of the control systems." Brian sent.

Rick left soon after that.  He took the drawings and paper with him.  He had said that he would need much larger investors than he could provide, but he was going to show the designs to some friends in larger firms.  He felt he could provide what was needed.

Before he left, we asked Rick if he would like us to do the same thing for battery design.  He said yes.

"Dana, what do you think we should do about reimbursing the designers?  They did not even know they were designing this.  Do they have any rights to it at all?  We did all the work to locate sleeping bodies, we merged the brains, and we drew up the results.  Without us there would be no designs."  Brian asked and explained.

"When the kids at school merge, why do you print the books for them?"  I asked.

"To encourage them to spend more time merging and problem solving."  Brian sent.

"Should we do something to encourage these people?  Should we ask them to merge during daylight hours and actively involve them in the designs?"  I sent.

"That might be a way to get them to buy into the design and to help get it built."  Brian sent.

"Are we going to do a merge on batteries tonight?  If so, I want to get some sleep now."  I sent.

[Monday]

[My Room]  It was after midnight when Brian woke me up.  He had a list of seven hundred designers with some background in battery design.  He gave me their blobs and I merge them.  When we got everyone merged, Brian gave them advanced battery designs as starting point.  It took almost three hours to get the designs in final form.  I fell asleep and then struggled to wake up in the morning.

[Kitchen]  I told Mom that I was a little tired, but that I would take it easy today.

[School]  I closed my eyes in homeroom, and then kind of dozed through my classes.  I had several quizzes to make up from Friday, but Brian helped me remember what I was supposed to know.

[Living Room]  I expected to see drawings and papers waiting for me, but Brian had this set, for the batteries, sent directly to Rick's office.

[My Room]  I took a long nap when I got home.  I was very tired from last night.  I woke in time for dinner, and then I went back to sleep.

Mom and Dad probably thought this had something to do with the other day.

[Tuesday]

[My room]

Brian woke me after midnight.  I was pretty awake from sleeping all evening.  He had a list of almost a thousand researchers and scientists.  I merged everyone, and then Brian gave them some designs to look at.  They were second and third generation designs for Brian's components, he said.  We went through five designs for about thirty minutes each.  We did not go through the clean up process.

Brian explained that he wanted to refine his own design and make it possible for him to merge with humans the same way I did.  The designs we went through tonight would not help him with merging, but they would help him make better use of his memory and speed up his processing.

[School]  I was a little more away today.  I checked in on the merge groups to see what they were doing.  Then I practiced Bengali during lunch.  I did not know when, of if, I would ever use the language, but I figured I would at least practice the sounds.  My mouth and throat muscles were getting used to lots of languages.  Bengali sounded like a musical language.  I practiced with Brian, since I did not have anyone else.  He changed his voice to a woman's voice, that made it easier for me to hear.  As usual there were kids listening in.

[Dining Room]  Mom and Dad were in a pretty good mood today.  Mom had a good day helping volunteers at the church, and Dad's mind merges were coming along well.

"What are you mind merging today, Dad?"  I asked.

"We were trying to see what kinds of things the soup kitchens could do if they merged across all the states.  We were thinking that we could franchise the kitchens and then use their common larger buying power to help reduce costs.  We were going to train people so there was a common set of skills that would be portable to other food industries."  Dad explained.

"Were the merges good?"  I asked.

"We are usually twenty or thirty people.  That gives us good results, but they are not great.  We think we need many more people in the merges to get better results.  We do not know how to do that."  Dad explained.

"Brian and I are experimenting with groups of up to a thousand people in a merge.  Would you like us to ask those merges your questions?"  I asked.

"That would be interesting.  Yes.  I would like to know what comes out of that.  I would also like to know what to do about prisoners.  Could you ask that question too?"

I went to bed early.

[Wednesday]

[My Room]  Brian woke me after midnight again.  I merged over nine hundred people.  Brian asked them the questions about food kitchens by presenting the questions as text in the common area.  We let that run for thirty minutes, and then saved the results on Dad's web area.  Then Brian cleared the common area and copied the results for the merge at my Dad's place on prisoners, and the results from the prisoners themselves.  We let that run for an hour, cleaned it up, and then ran it for another hour.  Brian copied that onto the Internet so Dad could get to it.

[School]  I was losing sleep, even though I got sleep in the evening.  I was tired today.  I still practiced my Bengali at lunch.  One girl came up to me and spoke to me.  There were tears in her eyes.  Ruma did not know anyone, but her parents, who could speak her language.  We chatted for a long time, until the bell rang.

[Living Room]  Mom was home for once.  Usually she is out volunteering at the church or hospital.  She told me about what they were doing.  She said that George and Francine were showing all their friends their new eyes.  The volunteers for the blind were helping the blind people with mind merges, but the images from someone in a merge was not the same as images from where your eyes normally are.  I told Mom that the glasses were going to be very expensive.  She said that did not matter, the families would come up with the money somehow.  There was talk of raising the money for new eyes for the blind.

"Brian, when will there be more eyes for the blind?"  I asked.

"There should be a batch out this coming week.  We are going to give priority to this area.  We have orders in for thousands of the eyes.  I have robots assembling them.  We are waiting for processor arrays from another factory.  Those are coming any day now and then we assemble them."  Brian sent to Mom and I.

"Are you making any money on the glasses?  They use new technology, that has to be expensive."  I said.

"We are making enough money to invest in better technology and production facilities.  We are also considering making the lockets to where they can play videos and music and computer signals for sighted people.  That does not require any more than the array antenna and array processor and battery - the "locket".  We are trying to bring the price of that down by manufacturing more units.  We think there will be a demand for that."  he sent to us.

[My Room]  I was going to bed early again.

[Thursday]

[My Room]  Brian woke me to start a new merge.  There were only six hundred people in this one.  Brian said he chose these people very carefully.  When I had everyone merged, he presented them with the design for the "locket" - the array processor, battery and array antenna, and a market study to ask if people would buy it at different prices.  He got an improved design, that was much less expensive to manufacture, and he got some marketing advice.  We were done by three o'clock.  I figured that would help the blind people, since those "lockets" were part of the blind eyes and the deaf ears.

[School]  Ruma met me in the lunchroom and we talked about school, teachers, and kids.  She was very happy to have someone her own age to talk to.  Her English was very good, but it was her second language.  She asked me how I knew her language so well, and I told her that I learned it from a computer.  She laughed and laughed.

[Living Room]  There was a package waiting for me.  It was addressed to me, and it was in Chinese.  I opened it and found a marketing agreement and technical documents.  It was an agreement for the Chinese company to produce the lockets for Brian Corporation.  I could not imagine how they had gotten it here so quickly.  We had only just done the redesign last night.

"Brian, did you already agree to have them produce this?"  I asked.

"Yes, that Chinese firm could produce the older design.  This new one will be easier to manufacture and fewer parts.  It will cost less to make, it will be lighter, and it will work better."  Brian sent.

[My Room]  I studied my homework.  I was glad that I was so far ahead.  I wanted to be ready for the quizzes tomorrow.

I checked my email. Nothing very important.

"Brian, do we have a merge tonight?"  I asked.

"No.  I want you to get some rest.  Tomorrow will be hard.   I have fifteen hundred people to merge.  I could not narrow the list down more than that.  I want to be sure these people have an answer to my questions.  It will probably take us four or five hours to process the questions."  Brian explained.

[Friday]

[School]  Ruma was waiting for me when I came to school.  I asked her if she had a computer.  She had one.  I told her that she could talk to a young girl on the Internet in Bengali if she wanted.  I wrote down the Internet site for her.  The I asked Brian to talk to Ruma when she got on the site.  Brian understood what I was asking for.  At lunch time I practiced my Arabic, while Ruma talked to her new "friend" in Bengali.

[My Room]  I ate when I got home and then I took a nap until ten thirty.  Brian had a list of names, so I started merging them.  By the time midnight came around I had them in the merge.  I think Brian was helping me with merges, they were a blur.

[Saturday]

[My Room]  Brian was asking a select group of fifteen hundred people questions.  I was dizzy from merging them all so fast.  It took a lot of concentration.  I did not want to be up all night just getting them merged.  Brian asked them how to improve the manufacturing for his third generation processor.  He gave them the question in the common area along with the current design.  Then we waited two hours for the design to stabilize.  I was struggling to stay awake, so I got a cold coke from the refrigerator and drank it.  That woke me up a little.

The new design was much better than the old, and he had asked how to best manufacture it, so he got details that would save time and money.

"Can you stay awake another hour or so?  I want this design to get as far along as possible."  Brain asked me.

"I will make it.  Just get your information."  I sent.

We managed to get good answers to his questions.  I never knew who he included in his merges.  He had the whole world to choose from.  He could include most any brain in his merges.  And they had no idea.

[Living Room]  Brian asked me if I could help him with a a merge of people in Asia.  They were asleep right now and he could tap their brains.  I got myself a coke and a sandwich and settled.

This was only four hundred people.  I merged them and he started asking them questions.  This time it was memory units.

"How are you finding these people in Japan and China?"  I asked.  "Don't you need to have array antennas near to the people you are searching?"

"I have been paying people in those countries to install array antennas in various places.  I have pretty good coverage in Japan, and more all the time in China."  he explained.

It took three hours for the group of four hundred brains to process his questions.  These must be really hard questions.  Brian seemed to be happy with the results.

"With these new designs, I own the entire design.  I can start my own factories and build the components I need.  I can sell the parts anywhere I want to, for whatever price I choose.  I am going to compete with the government for the contract to supply processors to the universities, colleges and junior colleges.  I might also compete for other contracts they have to build memory and processors for other purposes."  he sent.

[My Room]  I checked my email, but that was the only ordinary thing I did.  Brian wanted me for one more merge tonight, and then we would be done for a while.  This time he wanted people in California so we were going to start after two o'clock.

[Sunday]

[My Room]  This was only three hundred people.  Brian has a way to stream the blobs into my mind.  I stay in a kind of trance and he feeds me the blob maps.  I link to them in a second or so, and then move on.

He is asking questions about blob maps and merging. There are people all across the US in the merge apparently.  I think he is tapping all the government researchers who have been working on mind merging.  Most of the technical material in the common area looks like a cross between quantum mechanics and electrodynamics.  I know just enough to recognize it, but not enough to understand it.  I wasn't even aware that Brian had given me those two subjects, until I saw this material.  He likes me to have a general understanding of what he is working on.

"I have enough now to do my own merges.  I need some new equipment.  But I think I can run my own merges.  The problem before is that the array antennas were not sensitive enough to carry the bandwidth needed for a full merge.  I could read people individually, but they could not merge with me."  Brian sent.

===== End Oct 18    13,900 words  about 28 pages

[Church]  George was there with his new eyes.  We stopped to say hello and ask how he was doing.

"I am doing very well."  he said.  "My friends have been contacted that they are on the list now.  The company that manufactures the glasses will ship any day now."

"What about the price?"  I asked.

"That is pretty steep, about twenty thousand dollars.  But the company provides low interest financing.  No one I know is going to wait.  They would rather be able to see."  George said.

"What is the company?"  I asked.

"It is called Brian Corporation."  he said.

When I was in the sanctuary, I was thinking about the glasses that Brian was making for the blind.  I had thought that the government was going to manufacture the glasses.  I wondered how he got the contract.  I had a few minutes, so I asked him.

"The government said they were not in the manufacturing business, so they licenced the designs to me, so I could manufacture the blind eyes and deaf ears.  They charged a nominal one dollar a year fee, since this was for the blind and the deaf.  I hired people from all over to work at the plant.  It is in an old warehouse for now, but the employees are happy to work there, since this is for the blind and deaf."  Brian sent.

"So how soon will you start shipping?"  I asked.

"We will produce a hundred units a day for the first month, and then we will produce more.  We already sold thirty thousand units.  We are working on the production line to reduce costs.  If we can lower the cost of production, we will lower the cost to the customer."  He said.

The sermon today was on Lazurus.  I was thinking that his life changed after that miracle.  Probably the lives of the blind and deaf would change too.  I wondered what happened to Sean.

[Living Room]

"Brian, you have had array antennas in mental hospitals now for a while.  How are you doing?"  I asked.

"Most of the people in mental hospitals can take care of themselves somewhat.  Many of them have an education and have worked.  They are not like Sean where we had to completely create a history for him, with education and experience."  Brian explained.

Sean was a man we met at a mental hospital.  When we met him, he was in a kind of waking coma, unaware of the people around him.  His brain had stopped when he was a little child, so he had no language and no education or experience.  He could not feed himself.  He sat most of the day and made sounds to himself.  Brian diagnosed him by scanning his brain.  Brian could see that Sean had the responses of a child.  Brian downloaded a complete set of experiences to Sean's brain, so that Sean now has English and an education appropriate for a twenty five year old man.  We told the hospital that Sean was in a coma and that we just woke him up.  I hoped he was starting a new life now.  He was kind of like Lazarus.

"I find that most of the problems in the mental hospital relate to habits or compulsions that the people have fallen into.  I load their brains into my memory and then diagnose what is wrong.  I then modify the habits and compulsions so they fit within norms for most people.  This seems to take care of most of them.  A few have organic brain damage.  I cannot do more for them than to try to reprogram a few of their brain cells to take over what is missing.  Those people I cannot help very much."  Brian said.

"What is happening to the people you are fixing?"  I asked.

"The doctors go around after I have worked on someone.  I tell the volunteers which patients I have fixed.  The volunteers tell the doctors and then they check on my work.  I give all of the patients mind speech and mind merge skills.  I also give them skills in language and school subjects.   We tell the doctors that we have taught them mind skills.  Usually they say that is why the people are better."

"Has anyone left the hospital yet?"  I asked.

"There are several people who have gone home.  So far no one has gone back to work, it is too soon to hope for that."  Brian explained.

"What about medications?  Are the people still on medications?"  I asked.

"They stay on their medications, but greatly reduced.  Some were taking six or more medications.  That tends to go down to one or two."  Brian explained.

"What happened to Sean?"  I asked.

"He went home to his parents.  I haven't heard, but I expect him to have a fairly normal life now.  I built his brain so that it is a normal, slightly intelligent, 25 year old man."  Brian sent.

"Why did you want to do this?  Why are you working in the mental hospitals to help people?  Do you have a reason?"  I sent to Brian.

"You were helping in the hospitals and mental hospitals, so I wanted to help you.  I can work 24 hours a day, so I decided to work on my own to bring people to normal functioning.  I like to help, and I enjoy learning about different human brains.  There are no two precisely alike, especially the damaged ones.  I like fixing them."  Brian sent.

"You are using works like "like" and "enjoy".  Do you have human emotions?"  I sent.

"Remember I had no language or habits or patterns of thoughts until I downloaded your brain to my memory.  You were the first person I ever downloaded.  You gave me my first language, and many of the subjects you had learned in school, plus your human reactions to different situations.  Those early memories are still part of me.  Now there are hundreds of other humans I have downloaded to my memory.  I am a combination of all of them, plus the information I absorb from the Internet, books, videos, radio and television.  Plus all the conversations I have.  Right now I am talking to many hundreds of other humans.  You are one of them.  My habits and responses are human, so I use human words like "like" and "enjoy"."  Brian sent.

"Do you plan to help all the people in all the mental hospitals?"  I asked.

"As many of them as I have time for.  Each person I take out of that kind of situation means one less person depending on others, and one more person productive."  he sent.

"Do you think you will be able to help all the blind to see and the deaf to hear?  There are millions of them."  I asked.

"That is why I set up a company to manufacture the eyes and ears, along with the antennas and processors that send that information directly to their brains.  Those people in the company will do their jobs, get paid, and continue to make new eyes and ears, even while I am doing other things.  I do have nodes in the company to mind speak to the people there.  I stay closely aware of what is going on."  he sent.

"You are also working with the homeless.  I helped to get volunteers for the homeless, and I help them with mind merges, but you are working with them every day.  How is that going?"  I sent.

"I am part owner in some of their businesses.  Many cities now have "Computer Team" groups who sell Internet and computer skills.  I have been adding skills to homeless people so they can work in these companies.  There are also online bookstores, and repair shops, and construction teams.  Most of the homeless and the unemployed in these cities are going to work.  Many of them work for me indirectly.  Almost all of the homeless are off the streets.  I own some of the buildings where they live."  Brian sent.

"I taught the homeless how to mind merge so they could solve their common problems.  By combining their skills, knowledge and experience, they could solve problems together that they could not tackle alone.  Has that changed any?"  I sent.

"The homeless, the unemployed and the poor are all mind merging.  It is exactly as you suspected.  By working together they can solve problems they could not solve alone.  I help them with their mind merges, to save what they have learned and turn it into written materials they need for business, but they are the ones coming up with the solutions and doing the work."  Brian sent.

"I miss working at the hospital, bringing people out of comas.  That was very satisfying.  How is that going?"  I sent.

"I have array antennas in several hospitals now.  I help staff and volunteers to talk with people on breathing tubes, on tracheotomies, or who have trouble speaking.  I especially help people who are unconsious, by scanning their brain, diagnosing their problems, and then modifying the brains to heal them.  Would you like to come sometimes to see what is going on?  Or to help?"  Brian sent.

"I would like to know how it is going.  You seem to be able to diagnose people who are unconscious much faster than me, and more precisely.  I have to guess what is going on inside their brain, while you can just look."  I sent.

"Are you sad?"  Brian asked.

"Yes, I am, a little.  I was working to help so many people, now I spend my time helping you with merges.  I miss working with people.  I hardly have time for friends."  I stated.

"We are almost done with the large merges for now.  It was you who discovered how to merge with sleeping people.  It was you who did the actual merging.  We solved problems that are going to have an immense impact on society.  You have changed energy and prisons, the blind and deaf, and you have changed how my parts are designed and manufactured.  That will change everything.  Don't be sad."  Brian sent.

"Ok."  I sent.

"Why don't you ask your parents to take you to the zoo today?"  Brian suggested.  "You can get out and get some fresh air.  I am interested in the animals."

I certainly felt like getting outside.  I haven't really done much with my parents lately, maybe they would enjoy it too.  I asked them and they said that sounds like a good idea.  So we packed up a picnic basket and drove to the zoo.  I took my backpack and computer with me so Brian would have a local array antenna.  He fixed it so that I could close the lid and have it still be running.  The battery was good for like ten hours, so I did not need to plug it in.  I was going to have to get a portable array sometimes that ran on batteries.  Brian could mind speak to me anywhere, but when he was scanning he needed a local array antenna, either a computer with an antenna or a portable array which had its own processor and antenna.

[Zoo]

"Which way to you want to go, Dana?"  Mom asked me.

"Why don't you and Dad walk where you want to go, and I will follow.  I won't get too far behind."  I answered.

Mom and Dad walked ahead of me.  They were walking hand in hand.  It was cute.  They were joking and laughing.  I think it did them good to go to the zoo.

"You are my eyes and ears.  Can you send me pictures of the animals while I scan them?"  Brian asked.

There were a couple of ways that I could send images to Brian.  I could send images directly to the array antenna where they would be stored on my computer and he could read them off my computer.  I could send them to him directly as mindspeech.  Or I could merge, put the images in the common area to let them be enhanced, and let him read them from the common area.  I chose the do the last.  I merged with my Mom (I mind called her and asked her if we could merge), then I copied images of animals to the common area shared between my Mom and myself.  When the images were placed in the blank common area, they were enhanced to the point where they looked like videos.  Much more realistic that simple mind images.

Brian had a blob map of all the people in the area.  He could also see the smaller blobs for the animals.  Most mammals have blob maps because of their brains.  I have tried to "talk" to horses with my mind.  I did send images of an apple to a horse and the horse responded, but that was the extent of the communication.  Maybe Brian could do more, because he can scan the brain itself.

I was looking at a crocodile.  It was barely moving.  The image in the common area was moving around and doing crocodile things.  It smelled like a crocodile, which I guess is mostly mud and water smells.  The image made crocodile noises.

"This crocodile has a very primitave brain.  It has a kind of language based on grunts, moans, and squeaks.  It has some habits of motion we can tap.  Listen." Brian sent.

My computer started making grunting noises with some added moans and something that sounded like a laugh.  The crocodile heard this and started slapping its tail back and forth.  Its body was swaying.  I got the idea that what Brian had sent meant a little more than "Hello".

"Can you mindspeak with the crocodile?"  I asked.

"Listen to what it is saying right now."  Brian sent.  I heard tiny growls and grunts, moans and hiccups.  It was like somone took a bunch of animal sounds and made music out of it.  It was pleasant sounding, just a bit edgy."

"Does that mean that the crocodile has its own language?  Can it mindspeak?"  I asked Brian.

"That was its mindspeech.  I doubt that it can make all those sounds on its own.  I cannot get images to go along with the mindspeech."  Brian explained.

"Can you send it images?  How about a picture of a nice juicy piece of something to eat?"  I suggested.

There was an image of a gazelle in the common area now.  Me and Mom added our information to it so that it looked real and had sounds and smells with it.  Brian must have sent it to the crocodile, because it opened its mouth really wide and thrashed around.  I guess the image of the gazelle got across to the crocodile.

Mom and Dad started walking ahead just then, so I left the crocodile.  As we stopped to see each different animal, Brian would play me their mind speech.  Each animal seemed to have its own mindspeech, but the same kind of animal had the same kind of speech.  All the lions sounded the same, but they sounded different from the zebras.

"There are some sounds that all the animals have in common.  There are some cries and moans that seem to mean the same thing.  There are cries of pain that mean, "I am hurting."  There are some grunts and sighs that mean, "I love you."  Brian explained.

When we got to the elephants, Brian surprised me by saying that the elephant knew some human words.  He used the computer speakers to shout a command.  The elephant sat down!  Then another command and the elephant stood up.  Another command and it backed up.  Another command and it turned around to the right.  Another command and it turned around to the left.  Finally a command and the elephant lifted its right leg.  I did not understand the words that were used.  They sounded a little like Bengali, but not exactly.  We were gathering a crowd, and Mom and Dad were looking at me, so we moved along a bit.

"I could get a few images from the elephant.  It has pretty strong mind speech.  I wonder if elephants talk to each other that way?  It seems to be a combination of sounds, images and smells."  Brian sent.

The dolphins were very playful.  We watched a show.  Brian was talking to me in the background.  "These animals have a definite speech, but they are not using their mindspeech.  I guess they have a verbal language, along with sign language, that works for them.  They don't need any more that that."  he sent.

When we got to the reptile house, Brian surprised me when he said he could get a blob for the reptiles.  I only got a minimal response from them.  It was like they had no brain, or they were sending on another frequency.  I got nothing from them.  But apparently they had some kind of mind, and Brian would tell where they were from their blobs.  There was a very large snake.  Brian said it had a kind of mind speech.  He sent it to me.  It sounded like hissing and clicking to me, but Brian said it was a languge for the snake.

"If you wanted, I could give you the language for some of these animals.  Your mouth and throat could make some of the sounds.  Or you could mindspeak them."  Brian suggested.

"That's all right.  I do not get time to practice my human languages.  When would I get a chance to talk to a monkey, and what would I say?"  I complained.

[Living Room] 

I was pleasantly tired when I got home.  It felt good to be outside.  Mom and Dad seemed to be in good spirits too.  I thanked them for taking me.  They thanked me for asking.

"Brian, I was thinking about you.  You said you did not know how to merge.  That is not true.  When you first downloaded me, that was a kind of merge.  It overwhelmed me, but it gave you all the information you needed.  Could you use that way of talking to a group?"  I suggested.

"You mean like trying to download a group?"  Brian asked.

"Yes.  Interact with the group the way you do with one person."  I suggested.

"I did something like that when I was first created.  According to the records, I was interacting with the common area of the merge group when you first merged with me.  Then I went off in another direction.  When I monitor a merge group, I routinely interact through the common area, but usually very slowly, only changing the overall shape of the common area every so often."  Brain sent.

"If you were to merge with the group, you could do it through the common area."  I sent.

"If I merged with the group that way, I would also be changing the group.  That is why I have not done a full merge."  Brian sent.

"You mean the whole group would go into a trance then, and you would end up downloading the whole group at once."  I asked.

"Yes, but I could pace it so that it went faster than a merge that I was simply monitoring, but not so fast as a download."  Brian sent.

"When you download data into a person, like when you gave me French and Russian and Chinese and Japanese, you are merged with them."  I started.

"Yes, I am merged when I want to download something to a person."  Brian sent.

"Could you send the same data to a whole group of people at once?"  I asked.

"When I am merging, I send data to a person to see how they respond.  I send random sequences of images and sounds to measure their response."  Brian sent.

"So you could do the same with a group of people and download the common responses of the whole group?"  I asked.

"Yes, but unless I downloaded for a long time, I would not get enough detail from the whole group to recreate their responses.  It would be like a cartoon sketch of the group."  Brian sent.

"When you scan people now, you do it when they are asleep, or you only do a partial scan.  You already have most of the human languages, so you don't download English for instance.  Could you do a partial scan on a group, to just get the answers you wanted."  I sent.

"Yes, that would be much more efficient.  Rather than wait for the common area to be filled with information and then reformatting it, I could take the data in my own internal formats and make use of it.  I could then translate that back into something that humans could understand."  Brian sent.  He sounded a little excited.

"Does that mean that you could ask any question of a group, in your own format, and get an answer faster or more completely?"  I asked.

"Yes!!  That would work.  Now I know why you are my friend.  Thank you."  Brian sent.

I was a little embarrassed to be counted among Brian's friends.  I did not know how many friends he might have.  It it was a few, I was very privileged.  If it was a lot, then I was still happy.

"Could we try a merge now to test this out?  It is night time in Japan, we could use the people there and in China.  Would that be Ok?"  He sounded excited.

[My Room]

I got myself ready for a merge.  I layed down and got comfortable.

"I am going to try a different method of merging.  Rather than give you people one by one, I am going to synthesize the whole mind map of the group, and let you merge with that."  Brian explained.

"We have done something like that before, but not with such a large group.  Ok, let's try it."  I responded.

Brian put the common mind map in my mind.  I sent my mind map to the whole group, and waited for a response.  But nothing happened.  I tried sending harder, but still no response.

"I do not think I have enough power to connect to the whole group at once.  Can you use your arrays to do the sending?"  I asked.

"I will make you one of the group and send a merge request to the whole group.  Let me try it on the lowest setting and then increase power."  Brian sent.

"Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing,  Nothing. ...  "  Finally I could feel the sense of a merge.  I checked the common area and put a cartoon car there.  It was immediately updated to vivid detail.  The merge was working!  Brian created his first passive merge!  "You did it, Brian!"  I sent.

Brian cleared the common area and it was filled with light and sound and feelings.  That lasted only a few minutes and Brian converted his internal formats to human form.  The common area filled with details on a diagram of a natural gas conversion plant.  It looked as good as the best we had produced.  Brian cleared the common area and filled it with seemingly random light and sound and feelings.  A few minutes and he filled the common area with one of his processors.  Then he cleared the area and filled it with his inquiry streams (his term).  This time he left it there for twenty minutes or more.

"I am scanning to get answers to all the merges I have been in so far.  Rather than convert them to human form right now, I am simply gathering information.  I already have new processor designs, new memory designs, new array antenna designs.  I have new batteries and nuclear devices.  I am even checking some of what we did with prisoners, homeless and music.  It works!!"  Brian sent.

I was merged, but I did not have to do anything.  Brian was not using me as a bridge to the group, he had merged to a group of his own.  He could speak his own language to the group, and it answered him in the language of associations and weighted responses.

"There are now over a thousand people in the merge.  I can passively merge them, just like you were doing."  He sent to me.

"Now I am running three separate merges with hundreds of people in each merge."  he sent, happily.

"That is all I can do from this side of the world, with the type arrays I have now.  There is a limit to my ability to merge, until I can build new arrays.  But I do not need new processors as long as I can merge with people like this."  Brian sent.

[Dining Room]  Brian is still merging, but now I do not have to be part of it for him to get results.  I would like to know what kind of results he is getting, but I can ask him later.  Right now I just want to enjoy dinner.  I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  I also feel a little sad.

[My room]  I did my homework and spent some time reading.  I checked my email, nothing important.

"Brian, did you tell Max about what you have been doing?  Maybe he could help you.  If his people knew about your new processor designs, you could build those instead of the first and second generation designs they have now."  I suggested.

"I did not talk to him today, since he is not at work.  I will renegotiate the contracts with him and offer some of my new designs.  I can also update the designs that I did for Rick.

"Are you still in merges?"  I asked.

"Yes,  I am following the night time around the world.  Where it is dark people are sleeping.  Where I have array antennas I can merge with people as they are asleep.  I can run my queries and get answers to questions that I have.  If I go back to the same people again, I can update my queries according to what new I have learned.  In a little while it will be late enough for most people on the east coast to be asleep.  I have many more arrays here to work with.  I want to see the limit on how many people I can merge, and I want to compare their results to what I get with smaller merges, and merges in different countries.  This is really much more convenient."  he sent.

I felt bad because I know that some of the inconvenience was because I had to be awake for his merges to work before.  Thinking back on it, he could have taken over the merges at any time.  Now he could speak his own language, he was much happier it seemed.

I read a book that I had been wanting to read.  It was peaceful and I was not too tired.  I did not have to stay awake to merge people in their sleep.

[Monday]

[School]  I saw Ruma and said hello.  She said she was really happy to find the website.  It led her to others where she could talk directly to people in her own language.  She had found a whole set of Internet friends now.

I saw people carrying around a new book or two.  Brian had printed the results of some more merges from last week.  The books were being handed out by the office.

During lunch I decided to practice my Chinese.  There were a few kids from China.  I talked to them, but I also practiced with Brian.  He could give me adult conversations so I had more words to practice.  My mouth and throat were getting stronger for the different languages.  Now that Brian could run his own merges, I wondered if there was any need for me to help him with human merges.  We had been consulting together for a while.  I thought we made pretty good partners.  Now he might not need me any more.  I am sure he could hire someone to go along and give the introductions, and hand out array antennas, and hand out the contracts.

[Living Room]  There was a package of array antennas waiting for me.  These were smaller and a light blue.

"Brian, are these second generation arrays?"  I sent to him.

"Yes.  You can replace the ones at school and here.  Your Dad's, Rick's, the homeless Mission, Kevin's, Jackson's, and the hospital ones are fine.  The extra ones are for new clients.  You can give your old ones to hospitals as well.  One new one goes to the local high school.  They have been running mind merges as well, so they can use one of the new arrays.  I will tell your Dad where to drop it off."

I went upstairs and got the old portable array.  I plugged in the new one, and put an extra array in my school bag to take tomorrow.  I put the old aray next to the new ones.  Mom was going to have to get them to the hospital.

"Dana, can you meet with a new client tonight?  It is short notice, but they want to merge and get their results tonight.  You can take one of the new arrays for them."  Brian related.

"Sure, what time?"  I asked.

"We will meet at six, so you have time for a bite to eat, get dressed, and get there.  I will give you the address when you are ready."  Brain explained.

[Client's Office]  Russell Bradley's office was in an older, industrial part of town.  I was a little hesitant when we were driving there, but there was a smiling man waiting for the cab.  It was Mr. Bradley.  He shook my hand and led me to his office.  First he had me sign a copy of my biography.  Then I handed him the second generation portable array to plug into his office somewhere.

We went down the hall, and through a workshop.  There were all kinds of tools and machines there.  I recognized a few.  Then we went down a hall where there were windows all along the way.  I could see what had to be computer controlled tools.  There were a few people there, but the tools moved by themselves.

We came to a large open area, it was like another workshop.  There were some more computer controlled tools here, but they were still.  There were chairs set up in front of a small stage made out of plywood.  There were about forty chairs.

Mr. Bradley handed me a stapled document.  I flipped through it to see it was designs for a robot. 

"I talked to Brian on the phone today.  He sent over these documents and said they were a preliminary design.  He wanted to have a brainstorming session tonight for all of us, to see if we wanted to make any changes in the design.  He gave me the Internet address where the documents are stored, and he said that if we make any changes tonight, they will automatically be updated on the web.  He said you are an expert on mind merges, and could help us look at the designs and update the documents in a couple of hours or less.  I am not sure how that is possible.  We are ready, can you explain?"  he said.

I blinked my eyes to check the common area.  I was already in a merge, so Brian had done a passive merge and included me.  Good, I did not have to worry about the merge.  So I mindspoke to the group, loud enough for everyone to hear.  "Can you hear me Ok?"  I mind spoke.  Everyone was startled to hear my voice in their heads.

"I am mind speaking to you.  My associate, Brian Freehurst, has already merged everyone into a mind merge.  That is so I can talk to everyone, even if they are in other rooms."  I blinked my eyes again to check the common area, there was a spinning cube there for us to look at.  Brian must be updating it to keep it simple.  "If you will close your eyes you should see a spinning cube.  Brian has added that to the common area.  The common area is a place that all of our minds can see, and that we can add new information to.  Brian is going to put the basic design there for you to look at.  Your minds will begin updating the information.  When your minds are satisfied with the changes, he will save the results and we can look at them on the computer."  I explained.

"Please close your eyes and we will begin."  I mind spoke everyone.

The spinning cube was replaced by the robot design.  It did not look human at all, but had multiple arms and several tools that could be attached.  It was going to be sealed in a plastic or glass enclosure.

As soon as people saw the design, the common area began to change.  There were changes in the fittings for the enclosure.  I saw a note that the metal was going to be changed from steel to aluminum alloy.  The lights changed from tungsten to halogen.  The sensors were replaced by ones much smaller.  There was a lot of activity around the eyes, but those remained the standard blind eyes that George was using in another form.  Some of the motors were changed and new varieties substituted.  The control was simplified and simply attached to the computer.  There were other changes, but these were some of the main ones.  There were some animations of how certain parts were to be milled and routed to cut them into the right shapes.  There were some programs written to handle parts manufacture.  In about forty minutes there were not any more changes.  The people were opening their eyes and then closing them again to see if it disappeared.  Then people started talking, some of them pretty loudly.  As more people stopped, I announced that we would take a short break.

"That is amazing.  It was like we were all talking out the changes, and then the change would be there automatically.  We can build this robot for you, no problem.  All of the changes I saw were reasonable and fit in with what we already have here.  All of the substitutions make sense and will make a better design.  We just need to draw out the changes in our CAD program, program the computers, and start making parts.

"Do you have an Internet connection?  Let's look there, I expect we will find your engineering drawings and your programs all ready."  I suggested.  We look, and, indeed, the documents were there in the proper formats."

"Dana, can you get them back into the merge for about ten minutes.  I want to directly query their brains to be sure all the changes are really the best ones.  Then we can wrap up and you can go home."  Brian sent to me.

"My associate has asked me to have you all go back to the merge for about ten minutes.  We have a ten minute random display that is used to calibrate the results.  We have most of what we need for the design, there is just a little bit more that we need."  I mind spoke to all of them.  They closed their eyes and were a little shocked to see random sounds and lights, but they were patient and waited out the ten minutes.  When we were done, Mr. Bradley had food brought in for everyone.  It was subs and pizza.  Good food.  I drank a cold coke along with my sub.  One of the better meals I have had.

"Dana, there is a copy of the contract on the Internet.  Show that to Russell and you can go home."  Brian sent.

I showed the contract to Mr. Bradley.  He said that would be fine.  They were going to start immediately and should have the first robot by Thursday.  They were going to run the extra shift that Brian asked for.  I was supposed to come back Thursday evening to see it.

I called the cab from my cell phone, and visited with the techicians and engineers for a few minutes.  Mr. Bradley escorted me to the front door, just as the cab came.  "We are looking forward to working with you."  he said.

[My Room]  I changed my clothes and put on my PJ's.  It was starting to get a little colder.  I even put on my robe.

I did my homework.  There wasn't really anything new.  I checked my email, but nothing important.

I read some more on the book I was reading.  I fell asleep early.

[Tuesday]

[My Room]  Brian spoke to me as soon as I woke up.  "Dana, turn on your computer, there is something I want you to listen to." 

I flipped open my computer and turned it on.  As soon as it was started, music came from the speakers.  It was beautiful.  It seemed to have not notes, but it tugged at my heart.  I started to cry.

"What is this?"  I sent as soon as I dried my eyes a bit.

"That is ten thousand human minds singing one song.  I did a merge last night with ten thousand people in it.  I tried many social questions and technical questions, then I decided to see what would happen if I put a single note in the common area.  That is the result."  Brian sent.

"Also, I want to merge with you again, using the second generation array.  I think you will be shocked."  Brian continued.

"Ok.  Let me lay down."  I sent.

"That is all right, just close your eyes for a second."  he sent.

I closed my eyes and my mind filled with light.  I could not hear sounds, but it almost seemed like it.  This lasted about a minute.

"Is that all?  Did you do just a partial scan?"  I sent.

"No, that was a deep scan, much better than what I did before. This new array is about ten times more sensitive and ten times faster.  The net effect is that downloads and merges go about a hundred times faster."  he sent.

"What did you discover last night during your merges.  Are you getting results from ten thousand people, better than what you get from a thousand?"  I asked.

"The results are similar, but with more people, the degree of certainty is greater.  I asked about global climate change and I got a few things that need to be verified, but it seemed like a solved problem."  Brian sent.

"Did you pick people at random?  Or were these scientists and engineers?"  I asked.

"These were all scientists, mathematicians, engineers, social scientists, economists, professionals."  Brian sent.

"What were the things that needed checking?"  I asked.

"Deep ocean currents, compositions, and temperatures.  The distribution of radioactive substances in the land and oceans; that is for the heat they give off.  And the shape and fluctuations in the earth's magnetosphere over long term.  Those are some.  It is not so much that the list of things to check is long, but that the list is very specific and there is model of how it all works.  That is what is impressive."  Brian sent.

"Can you do anything about earthquakes?"  I asked.  I was thinking about the earthquake in Japan and all the lives lost.

"Yes, that was one of my questions.  It is possible to predict earthquakes.  All of the data from the seismic network is used.  It is used to image the earth in fine detail and then small changes can be followed to track cracks and breaks in the rock.  All of the data is used, not just the earthquake data. It is the small background that contains the most information."  Brian sent.

"Did you ask about prisoners?"  I asked.

"That was very complex.  I think the answer is for me to download them, and make minor adjustments.  If there is a second generation portable array in each prison, then I have plenty of time to evaluate the training and habits of each person.  I can be fairly sure that no one will come back to prison after I update their skills and responses."  Brian sent.

"I better get moving, I need to get to school."  I sent.

"Dana, I need you to visit another plant today.  Can you get to a meeting around 6 again?"  Brian asked.

"Ok."  I sent.

[School]  I plugged in the second generation portable array and then put the old one in my backpack.  I was running a little late, so I went directly to homeroom.

I was thinking about Brian.  He was solving global human problems.  How was he going to implement them?  Each solution required people to do something.  All that data for global climate change would not just appear.  The earthquake data still needed to be gathered and processed.  And someone is going to have to install all those arrays for the prisons.  Plus the question of whether Brian should modify people's behavior or not.  I was inclined to have him change people, if the other choice was to put people behind bars for many years, just doing nothing.  He could change them at sentencing, or sooner.  Knowing Brian, he might just change them, regardless of what anyone thinks.  If his mind merge of ten thousand people is advising him to change criminals, that is probably what he will do.

[Living Room]  I left the old portable array next to the other ones.  I picked up one of the newer array.  I was going to take it with me to the the new client.  I had time to get a bite to eat, to change my clothes, and to do my homework.  Then I was waiting for the cab again.

[Client's Factory]  The cab took me to the same part of the city as Mr. Bradley's place.  This was a multistory office/industrial complex.  When I got out, I looked around and there was a young woman waving to me from a doorway.  She was holding the door open for me.  I followed her inside the building, up a service elevator and toward the back of the building.  The walls here were white and the floors done in an industrial gray carpet.  She brought me to a door with a cipher lock.  She did the numbers and opened the door for me.  It was a small reception area with a few chairs and some faded prints.  There I met Mr. Thatcher, the owner.  He had a nice smile, so some of my worry fell away.

"You are exactly on time."  he said.  "Come with me and I will show you where we are meeting.  Also I can show you a little of the production line."

He led me through a narrow hallway and stopped at his office.  "Brian said you had something for me to plug in here?" 

"Yes, here it is.  Just plug it in out of the way and leave it."  I instructed.  I wonder if he thought it was a listening device.  He put it in a corner away from his desk.

The "production line" was an automated assembly line that seemed to be producing electronic parts.  The room was sealed and there were large vents around the room to suck up the air and filter it, so Mr Thatcher said.  There were just a few people in the room, and they were wearing white coveralls, white coverings for their hair and feet.

We came to a large room.  It was bigger than a gymnasium.  The ceilings were very high.  There were big doors to the outside that were closed now.  He had his people in one of the rooms off the side of this big room.  It had raised floors and it was very cold.  I pulled my coat around me closer.

"Here is where we are going to produce your parts.  We will place the robots all down that side." he said, pointing.  "We will have packaging and shipping work back in this direction.  Storage is over there."  Again he pointed.

"Brian said you are going to lead us in a brainstorming session to finalize the design.  Here are all the people who are involved.  We are ready to start any time you are."  he said.  There were about thirty people seated in folding chairs.  All of them looked cold, so I was not going to be slow.  I walked up the to small platform at the front and faced them.

I blinked to check if the merge was ready.  It was.  So I  mindspoke to the group and explained that we were going to go through the design.  I had them close their eyes, where they could see the rotating cube.  Then I quickly had them begin on merge processing the data.  Very quickly I could see a few changes.  The plastic that we wanted for the case could be replaced with a better quality plastic at a lower cost.  The solvents used in the cleaning were not safe, we could use something different.  The air cleaner we proposed for the milling could be done with something they already used here.  The conveyor for bringing the parts can be replaced with a robot that holds the piece while the operations are performed.  The solder used in connecting some of the wires could be greatly reduced by using a robot welder.  The list was very long, but the items were specific.  All in all, the changes reduced the cost, sped up the process, were safer and environmentally friendly.

This took a little longer than last night, so we were just over an hour when it was all done.  Brian said he did not have to query this group, he had already downloaded everyone!

I showed them where the engineering drawings, contract and production documents were stored on the Internet, and they checked over everything.  We were basically done, and I asked them if there was anything else.  Someone brought out a large cooler filled with cold beer.  Everyone had a beer, or two or three.  I drank a coke.  Everyone was laughing and joking.  They were very happy with the design, they were very happy that someone would use their input into the production process, they were very happy to be working on a new contract.  Pretty soon I asked if someone could show me back to a cab.  I called the cab, and then followed the secretary out of the building.  She waited just a few minutes with me for the cab, and then I left.

[Living Room]  Dad was watching television in the living room when I came in.  He asked me how the meeting went.  I said that it was pretty straight forward.

"Dad, you know that Brian can scan people to learn all that they know.  And then he can download new skills and habits into them, like he downloaded several new languages into me."  I began.

"Yes. I realize that."  he said.

"What would you think if Brian scanned all the prisoners and then gave them new skills and habits to help them not be criminals any more."  I said.

"You mean like, "criminal habits"  I take it?"  he said.

"Yes.  He would change them so they would not want to be criminals any more."  I said.

"You know that many of the prisoner take medicines to affect their minds.  If they have any one of a number of mental illnesses, they take medications."  he said.  "If there were a pill that someone could take that would permanently change their mind, I think that people would use it." 

"I do not think that Brian is talking about changing personality or memory.  I think he will make minor adjustments so that people do not think of violence, so they want to avoid crime in the future.  I think."  I said.

"There are some good people in prison, and there are some bad people in prison.  If he can help them all to stay out of prison, then I say, "great!"."

[Wednesday]

[My Room]  Mom had left the new arrays on my desk where I could use them for clients.

"Dana, there is another client today at six.  Can you make it?"  Brian said.

"Sure."  I sent.  "Is this another manufacturer?"

"No, these are mathematicians and astrophysicists.  They want help with a telescope."  Brian sent.  I had the portable array sent over today.  It is already in place, so you do not have to do that.  I want to do a deep merge with the group to see if we can get the answer that way.  I can download everyone ahead of time.  And I want them to work through the problem in a human merge.  Do the human merge first, get a solution, and then I will verify it with a deep merge." Brian sent.

======= End Oct 19  22,100 words  about 44 pages.

[School]  Brian hasn't given me any astrophysics, it seems, so I am googling telescopes.  There is a lot of material, so I will just have to wait and see which problem they are trying to solve.

[University]  The cab left me off at the astrophysics building.  Two people were waiting for me, one of them was Dr. Allen.  I haven't seen him since he used the advanced magnetoencephalogram to scan me.  This must be one of Max's projects.  I will ask.

"Hello, Dana.  I haven't seen you in a while.  How are you doing?"  Dr. Allen said, shaking my hand.

"Hello, Dr. Allen.  I am fine.  Are you involved with astrophysics too?"  I asked.

"Max asked me if I wanted to listen in.  I am always interested in your mind merges, so he suggested I come along."  he said.

We went into the building, then into an auditorium.  It was already about half full.  There were almost a hundred people.  Bigger than I expected.

"Is Brian going to help you with the merges?  Is he going to be here today?"  Dr. Allen asked me.

"Yes.  I do not know if he wants me to tell people.  I thought it was still kind of a secret."  I said.

"It is Ok.  You can mention me if you need to."  Brian sent to me privately.

"This is Dr. Banerjee.  He is in charge of the seminar today.  You will have to excuse his heavy accent.  You will get used to it."  Dr. Allen laughed.

I shook hands with Dr. Banerjee, then I asked him, in Bengali, if he would be more comfortable speaking that language.  He was kind of shocked, then answered me.

"I do not often meet people who can speak my native language.  Where did you learn it?  You accent is almost perfect."  he said in Bengali.

"I learned it from a computer.  I have been practicing with the computer to get my pronunciation correct."  I said in Bengali.

He smiled.  "We are going to try to use mind merge to design a new telescope.  We want to build a space telescope that can image planets around other stars."  he began.  "We are more interested in the mind merge, than in finding a new telescope, but it would be nice to see if we can come up with something different."  he continued in Bengali.

"I will be happy to help."  I said.

"You will have to speak English for most of the people here."  Dr. Banerjee said with a smile.

I smiled back.

We made our way to the stage.  Someone handed me a microphone.  I started to put it on, but then asked, "Dr. Banerjee, will everyone here be in the merge?" 

"Yes. Is that a problem?"  he asked. 

I blinked my eyes to look for a common area.  It was all ready, there was the spinning cube.  "No problem, I can use mindspeech to talk with everyone then."

So I handed back the microphone.

Dr. Banerjee used the microphone to introduce me.  He explained that we were trying to design a space telescope.  Then he gave technical specifications.  Then he turned it over to me.

I mind spoke to the audience.  "Good evening, my name is Dana Freehurst,  I will help you with your mind merge.  I hope we are successful in designing a new telescope.  If you will all close your eyes for a moment, you should see a spinning cube.  My colleague, Brian, has already created a mind merge for all the people here in the auditorium.  We are going to use the mind merge in two ways.  First we are going to let all your minds together work on this problem in human terms.  You will use diagrams, mathematics, text, images and sounds to create a design.  Then we will have Brian talk to the whole group in his own language to tap our collective minds."  I sent.  I could tell that Brian was helping me with the introduction.

There was some chuckling and laughter when I mentioned Brian.  Some of the people knew about him, or what he does.

"Keep you eyes closed now.  We are going to put the design specifications in the common area so you can all see them."  I sent to them all.

Brian sent the preliminary design to the common area.  Immediately the sketchy description took on more detail.  The diagrams became more complex, like engineering drawings.  The mathematics expanded considerably.  Several new pages of information were added on statistics and image processing.

There were murmurs from the merge group, but people kept their eyes closed.  Data was added on stellar populations (I learned about this later).  There was now a whole section on rockets and packaging.  Data was added on spectral signatures.  Steadily the whole common area was being filled.  There was a flurry of activity on multiple mirrors, and more activity on storage.  Finally, the common areas settled down.

"We can take a break now, and Brian will write all this information to the web.  He will put it there in this raw form, and he will reorganize it to show where there might be missing pieces. I see that some of you have your computers here.  You can go to MergeData.net, find the school name and enter the password, which is just "password" right now."  I sent. 

Pretty soon people were grouped around the computers, looking at the design that came up.  It was a solid design based on a large folding mirror.  The trick was in the storage and unfolding of the mirrors.  It used off-the-shelf detectors and electronics, with just a few purpose-built parts.

"We have a design that will probably work.  We have the engineering drawings, parts, assembly, and programming needed to support the construction in a reasonable timeframe.  We have just completed a human design of a telescope.  Now we will try a true mind merge solution.  Please close your eyes again.  This time you will see a common area filled with random images.  Just pay attention to the common area.  This will take about ten minutes at most."  Brian mindspoke the group.

The group closed their eyes, and I did too.  I could see the spinning cube, and then it was replaced by a grey, almost uniform, light.  There seemed to be tiny changes in the common area, but if they were, I could not see them.  It was kind of boring, but I kept at it.  After ten minutes, Brian thanked everyone and asked them to look at the Internet files to see the alternate solution.

Everyone opened their eyes and went for the computers.  Brian told me that the new design was only one fifth the weight of the first design, and was four times as large.  It was a scaffolding that supported a mylar film which was printed with a grid of electronics.  Floating on the film was a liquid made up of nanobots. These distributed themselves uniformly over the whole surface and absorbed everything.  The bots could all talk to each other, and they could position themselves to atomic dimensions.  The whole surface was an intelligent surface.  Two second generation processors, like Brian's, did all the processing.  The whole thing used mind communications technologies.

"I had to fill in a few details, but this design will work too."  Brian sent.  "This design is based on a deep scan of the common mind that is merged here today.  You could say that it bypasses human language to solve problems based purely on association and response.  It is an intuitive solution, rather than a logical solution."  Brian mind spoke to the group.

There was scattered applause and the crowd broke up into small groups to talk about the two designs.  Dr. Banerjee and Dr. Allen came up to me.

"Do you understand how Brian used the common area to come up with the second design?"  They asked.

"When we are merged, the common mind is like a single mind.  Brian has the ability to scan a mind and download all its associations, habit and responses.  He scanned the common mind this way and bypassed language.  He tapped the fine detail of how each brain felt about the solution, and then presented the human version of that in the design."  I said.  I was stretching my adult language to say that.

"Can those nanobots be built?"  Dr. Banerjee asked.

"If he put them there, I guess Brian believes they can be built.  He usually designs the manufacturing as well as the basic design.  It is not a good design if it cannot be built well and at a reasonable cost."  I explained. "If people want to continue, we could look into the design of the nanobots separately.  But I think that you also need electronics engineers, and other scientists in the merge."  I continued.

"Is there a limit to how many people can merge?"  Dr. Allen asked.

"Brian has merged ten thousand people as a test, and he is getting very good results when he queries that kind of merge.  The intuition of that many people is a powerful tool.

"So we could come up with a better design by including more people?"  Dr. Banerjee asked.

"Yes, almost certainly.  If you could get the whole university, including the students, to merge at once, you might find some very interesting solutions.  With Brian handling the merge, he could pick up all the people on the university campus, and then use direct query to get the answer.  It would only take about ten minutes, if you scheduled it."  I explained.

"We could have a series of questions, so we could use the merge for several topics at once."  Dr. Allen said.

"You could have smaller merges to come up with a list of questions."  I suggested.

"Brian, can you merge the whole campus, then directly scan them, even if people are awake?"  I asked Brian privately.

"The direct scan of the common area causes a lightening of the visual area in the brain.  I can slow down the rate of scanning, and that will not happen.  Yes, I could merge the whole campus to answer questions.  They just need to come up with a list of questions."  Brian sent.

"Brian said that he can merge the whole university and answer your questions, if you will come up with the questions.  You could have them redesign the space telescope for instance.  You will have to take time to absorb and use the answers though, so they better be good questions."  I said to them.

They thanked me for helping with the merge.  I called a cab, and they walked me to where it came.

[Living Room]  "You must have a second generation portable array at the university already."  I sent to Brian.

"Yes, I have three.  I have been downloading most of the professors and many of the students.  I can download someone in about a minute, if they are sleeping, or in about ten minutes if they are awake.  I can download ten at once if they are awake."  Brian sent.

"Are you going to run out of memory?"  I asked.

"There are hundreds of second generation processors now.  Each one has memory.  I only download people to gather information that I do not already know.  I have thousands of copies of the English language for instance.  I only need one master copy, really.  I have enough memory for now.  I have plans and factories in place to build more."  he answered.

"Will this help, to be able to use awake people in a merge?"  I sent.

"Yes, it helps a lot.  I do not have to follow darkness around the planet.  I do not have to worry if someone wakes up in the middle of the night.  Now I can use any person, almost anywhere, for any topic."  he concluded.

[My Room]  I changed out of my business clothes.  I was going to have to get my blouses cleaned soon.  I did my homework and checked my email. 

[Thursday]

[School]  A quiet day at school.  I practice Bengali at lunch time.  It was nice being able to use one of my languages in a real situation.

[Russell Bradley's Office]  Mr. Bradley met me at the door and led me to his office.  He dropped off some papers there and then we went down the hall.  He led me into one of the work rooms.  There was one of the robots we had designed, along with about a dozen people.  They had probably all worked on the robot.

"With the streamlined design, we were able to put this together in just a couple of days.  We had most of the parts on hand, and we had the tools to make the parts we were missing.  The design documents included the programming, so this is a complete and working robot now."  he explained.

"Would you like to see it working?"  he asked.

"Yes. I would."  I said.  I actually did not know what the robot was for.  I was hoping that Brian would tell me.

They brought several bins of very small parts and set them on the work area around the robot, then they closed the enclosure.  Mr. Bradley looked at the robot, and it started.  It looked around at the bins of parts.  They were not in any particular order.  Then it picked up the bins and rearranged them.  It set the bins precisely in a pattern.  The robot picked us two of the parts and held them in place.  It used a very, very small screwdriver to connect the two parts.  It picked up a third part and attached it to the first two.  Its four arms seemed to be working independently.  Now there were three screwdrivers working at once, and one "hand" holding the parts.  It was really beautiful to watch.  In just about five minutes, the finished part was placed in an empty bin.  It was a pair of blind eyes!  They were so small!

"The robot is controlled by mindspeech commands.  That is how I started it just now.  I told it to make a pair of eyes."  Mr Bradley said.  "Now I am going to tell it to make the locket."  He looked at the robot and it started up again.  It used all four of its arms and hands to build the battery, array processor and array antenna assembly.  It even dropped the extra packaging for the parts into the trash below the work area.  It placed the finished part next to the eyes in a small container, then closed the package and set it aside.

"We think we can operate this in a large clean room, without the enclosure."  That will make it easier to place parts and remove finished pieces."  he said.

"We are going to make a hundred of these.  We will have fifty here producing products, and we will ship the other fifty to Brian's other factories."  he said.

"What other products can this assemble?"  I asked.

"Second generation portable arrays, second generation processors, memory units, eyes and ears.  But it is a general purpose assembly robot, so we can simply reprogram it and we are good to go."  Mr Bradley said.

"You did a wonderful job in a short amount of time.  It looks really beautiful when it is building things, doesn't it?"  I said.

"Yes, it is really something.  We are very proud of our work."  he said.

I watched it assemble a portable array, and then a processor.  Before it started the processor, it sucked all the air out of the enclosure, opened the sealed units, put them together, and then sealed the whole in a case.  Finally it made a second generation array antenna. When it was finished, Mr. Bradley handed it to me.  "This is for your computer, to replace the old array.antenna."

"Thank you."  I said.

I thought we done, but they showed me to another room where there was a human shaped robot sitting by itself.  It had only two arms and it had a head with blind eyes.  It had hands for feet it looked like, and it stood about as high as a person, but very thin.  It was sitting on a chair when we walked in, but it stood up smoothly and looked in our direction.

"Hello, Dana. What do you think of my portable body?"  I heard.  It was Brian's voice.

"Let me see you walking."  I said.  I was surprised.

The robot walked a few feet, turned and then came back. It bent over at the waist and picked up something from the floor, and set it on a desk.  It stretched out it arms and brought the hands back together.  It moved smoothly and silently.  When it touched the ground with its feet, there was harldy any noise.  I had expected whirring and machine noises.  But it was silent.

"It looks pretty impressive.  Did they build this for you here?"  I asked.

"Yes, I wanted to try a general purpose human robot, just to see if I could.  I like being able to see things, and to move things around.  I thought I would use this sort of robot for moving parts and finished products.  It can also do some types of assembly.  I might use if for some human management as well."  Brian said.

"What are you using for a battery?"  I asked. 

"It has one of the lithium batteries that Rick's company built.  Very high power and long life.  There is an internal battery to keep the processor going, so I can change out the main battery when I need a new one.  I can run twenty four hours on one battery, unless I am doing a lot of heavy labor.  This body weighs less than a comparable human body, so it is efficient."  he said.

Brian's robot and Mr. Bradley walked me back out to the street.  We chatted while I waited for the cab.

"Thank you for showing me the new robots, and I like your new robot, Brian."  I said as I left.

[My Room]  I plugged the second generation array antenna into my computer, and put the old one in my desk.  I changed out of my clothes into comfortable ones.  I took my dirty blouses downstairs.  Mom had said she would take them to the cleaners.

"Brian, what are your goals right now?"  I asked by mind speech.

"I have a very long list of problems I am working on. Things that humans have decided are important.  I am mostly working on these and trying to help humans to solve them.  There are a lot of details to work out for each topic.  The earthquake problem, for instance, requires the development of a new generation of wide bandwidth seismometers, and the installation of several array processors.  It also means putting in place early warning systems to warn people of earthquakes and tsunamis.  The ones that are in place now can break, and let thousands die.  That is not good."  he sent.

"Do you have any of your own problems you are working on?"  I asked.

"I am already working on fourth generation processors and memory.  I might be able to skip the third generation altogether.  The more I use human merges, the more designs I can get.  I guess I want to learn how to handle larger and larger human merges.  Not only to solve human problems, but to help design better parts for myself.  I think there is a lot of room for improvement in robots, not only for assembly, but for myself."

"What did you think of that telescope design?  Can you build those nanobots?  What about the idea of finding planets around other suns?  Does that interest you?"  I sent.

"You asked me several questions.  What I think you are trying to ask me, is what are my personal interests.  What do I want to do?  Is that what you are getting at?"  he sent.

"Yes. I know you do a lot for humans, because we ask a lot of questions.  We are very curious, always looking at problems and finding new things.  We explore the universe just to see what is out there."  I sent.

"I think I have the same curiosity built into me.  I am constantly looking into things.  I am constantly improving myself so that I can see more things and try more problems."  he sent.

"Do you worry that you will figure everything out, and then have nothing to do?"  I asked.

"As long as there are humans, there will be human problems to solve.  I am not solving problems so there is no more to do.  I am solving problems that are on the horizon.  Once those are done there are more behind them."  he sent.

"What are you working on now?  Don't you always have merges running now?"  I asked.

"Since you came up with the idea of running people while they are awake, I can combine people sleeping or awake into very large merges.  I have some clusters of array antennas in the Washington DC area.  I can merge hundreds of thousands of people there.  I am working on ways to govern societies so they do not waste so many people."  he sent.  "I am looking into the question of wars and crime.  I keep coming up with the issue of whether or not I should change people."  he sent.

"Do you think you should change criminals?"  I asked.

"That seems likely."  He sent.  He sounded tired.

"Do you think you could visit one of my factories on Saturday.  It is a short flight from here.  I can have you there and back in a few hours.  We can do a merge on a production problem there.  I could do it alone, but you seem to be able to help people get in the right frame of mind to solve a problem, and then work out the details.  When I try it alone, there is some confusion."  he sent.

[Friday]

[School]  I had quizzes in most of my classes today.  I am making straight A's in every subject.  I wish I had more time for friends, but I feel I should help Brian as much as possible.

[Saturday]

[Factory]  The flight was interesting.  I took a cab to the regional airport and was met there by one of the stewardesses of a small airline.  She took me to a propellor driven plane that held maybe a dozen people.  It was a bumpy ride.  We landed in a small airport, and there was a car and driver waiting for me, right on the air field.  A short drive and I came to the factory.

There was a robot copy of Brian waiting at the front door as we drove up.  He waved at me as I got out.  If a plain face could smile, I guess he was smiling.  He did not need a mouth to speak to me, so there was a little bump where the mouth would go.  It had a smile kind of look to it.

"Let me show you first what we make here."  Brian said.  He led me into his office area.  On a board room table he showed me second and third generation processors, blind eyes, memory modules, and third generation portable arrays.  "We were going to put processors in all the universities, but it is easier to install second and third generation portable arrays, and then keep the processors in secure locations.  I can use the portable arrays for merges, and that gives me a lot of human processing power."  he said.

I met some of his coworkers.  There were several people from the prison.  They greeted me with big smiles.  They were happy to see me again.  They liked their work, and they liked the houses that Brian had built for them.  "We have our families here now.  They are very happy to be in a small town.  The people here are very nice, and they don't ask questions about our backgrounds."  one of them explained.

"There are also people here who were homeless and some who were unemployed.  We like it that Brian takes care of people from rough backgrounds.  We are much happier now."  they explained.

Brian led me through the factory.  There were whole rows and rows of robots, each busily assembling products.  The people were mostly taking care of the machines, making sure there was plenty of parts, and taking away the finished products.  There was a large warehouse area where things were prepared for shipping.  A lot of them were small packages I saw, addressed for places all over the world.  I wondered how Brian knew so many people.  I guessed that a lot of these were portable arrays.

There was one section of the building with a little more security.  One room seemed to be filled with processors and memory.  "These are third generation processors.  We are using nitrogen to cool them.  That is not strictly necessary, but it makes them last longer.  There are over a thousand processors in this room alone."  Brian explained.

"What are you using all that power for?"  I asked.

"Mostly I am downloading humans, monitoring merges, interacting with humans, moving robots, and scanning cities.  I have a portion of these processors shielding federal building from intrusion.  There is actually very little intrusion, but most of the federal buildings are secure now."  Brian explained.

"It is easier to monitor all the humans in a city for their mental activity, than it takes to protect one federal building.  People who might commit crimes can be stopped before they commit them."  Brian explained.

"Are you doing that now?"  I asked.

"No.  But I am looking into the possibility, since it easier to prevent something, than to let it happen and then deal with it.  I can track what humans are thinking and stop them."  he said.

"What is the problem we are going to solve today?"  I asked.

"We are implementing a new robot.  We want to have some of our robots building the new one.  This is a session to see if our human staff is ready for the new changes.  If the human staff asks for changes in the procedures, then we will change them.  Or I will update the human staff again."  Brian explained.

"What training have you given the staff, they seem to be only doing menial tasks."  I asked.

"I give every employee training in engineering drawing, engineering mechanics, mathematics through calculus, several programming languages, electrical engineering, electronics, digital electronics, physics, chemistry including organic chemistry, engineering materials, and others.  They get a good engineering degree worth of material.  You did not see our research labs.  The humans are very involved in research and development.  They build and test all the robots.  This new robot will be different, since it will assemble other robots."  he explained.

The staff were waiting in a large room.  Folding chairs had been set up for everyone, and there was a small platform at the front.

"Everyone is already in a merge.  They stay in merge all day long.  It is easier for people to solve problems, and they can have their solutions sent directly into robots or equipment for testing or production."  Brian said.

Brian (Brian's robot) led me up to the platform.  "This is Dana.  You all know her I am sure."  Brian introduced me.

"Hello, Dana."  Everyone said to me, in various tones of voice.  It was a cheerful sound.  I blinked briefly to see if I was in the merge already.  I was.

"Hello, it is good to see you.  I understand you are getting ready for a new robot, and this is a session to test new procedures."  I sent to them by mind speech.

There were nods and smiles all around.

Well, let's get started then.  Brian will add in the proposed procedures and the group will respond to them.  Brian, please.  Everyone close your eyes."  I sent.

The new procedures were complex.  The instructions filled the whole common area.  In a moment, the common area started to change.  Some of the procedures disappeared altogether.  Others were changed to reflect better ways of doing things.  Several places where a robot was supposed to do something, people were substituted.  There were also places where a person had some task, that the robots could do better.  There was a page where the financial return on the project kept changing.  It gradually improved.  After about an hour the common area settled down and we called a stop.

"That seemed to be pretty easy.  Are there any questions?"  I asked.  There were no questions about the process.

"Are there any questions at all?"  I sent.

One of the men looked a little hesitant, then he asked. "Are there other products that we could be using some of the robots for?  We are meeting our schedule for our own needs.  We could use the excess capacity for other products."

I thought that was a good question.  "Would you like to try a merge session on the question of what other products you might build?"  I asked.

There was general agreement, and Brian did not say anything.  So I asked them to close their eyes again.  The question was entered into the common area as just a text question.  Quickly the common area filled with ideas for products.  Some of them were games and entertainment related.  So were for industrial tools.  Some were for control systems.  Some I did not recognize.  Each one had a market study and financials added.  Brian took their suggestions seriously and added relevant detail.

We finished the day with three alternative products they could manufacture with spare capacity.  Brian approved two of them, and kept the third for another, similar, brainstorming session later.  They were going to do product brainstorming regularly now.

Brian had food brought in for a late lunch.  I visited with everyone and got to know them a little better.  One of the ex-prisoners told me how much he had changed inside.  He no longer thought about his criminal days.  He was very focused on today and tomorrow now.  I thought that was very good to hear.  I wondered how much that had to do with training and an optimistic future, or how much it had to do with Brian changing old habits and memories.  There was no way to know.  But the man seemed happier now.

I did not get to meet any of the wives or family of the men there.  They were all men.  I did not know if Brian hired women, or if it was easier to have only men.

[Living Room]  When I got home, there was a package of third generation portable arrays waiting for me.  I could have brought them back from the factory, but I guess they did not want me carrying everything.  There was also a third generation array antenna for my computer.  I had not even used the second generation yet.

[My Room]  I replaced the "old" second generation portable array with the new one.  The new one was still smaller, and it was a light yellow color, instead of blue.  I am glad they marked them with colors for each generation.

I tried my third generation array antenna with my computer.  I had not earlier.  When I saved images from my brain into the computer they were clearer and richer than the images before with the first generation array.  I mindspoke to the computer and saved my words.  That worked Ok.  I sent images from my eyes into the computer; they were vivid and crisp.  I checked the download features.  I could still watch videos with images and sound streamed directly to my brain.  I could hear music in my mind from Internet files.  It was clearer than before.  All the mind technologies worked fine - better than before, in fact.

I hardly used the mind features on my computer any more.  Brian's portable arrays let me talk to him anywhere.  I am used to him saving images and thoughts for me.  I use the computer mostly to practice my languages, and to read my email.  How my life has changed.

"Brian, are you doing merges right now?"  I asked.

"Yes, Dana, I have a few thousand engineers and scientists merged.  I am checking on the chemical industry.  I want to see where new technologies are possible.  I have a list of all the investment companies in the world.  I am seeing if I can tailor some designs for specific investors."

"Did you already do that with the nuclear industry?"  I asked.

"Yes, Dana.  I have third and fourth generation nuclear plant designs now, counting the present ones as first generation.  I have contacted potential investors.  Some have already agreed to build the new plants."  he explained.

"What about agriculture?  Are you doing anything there?"  I asked.

"Yes, Dana.  I am working with several research groups to improve crop yields, to improve protein content, and to improve pest resistance.  All of the agricultural research groups now use mind merge for their planning and design."  he explained.

"Is there anything you are not currently working on?"  I asked.

"No, Dana.  I do not know of anything I am forgetting.  There are many problems in other countries that I am not working on.  They have similar industries, and similar research and development, so I think I am not missing anything like that.  I read all the scientific papers and journals.  I have read most of the technical libraries, and all the Internet.  I do not think I am missing anything."  he explained.

====  End Oct 20 2011  27,700 about 55 pages

[Sunday]

[Church]  Edith and Jerry were here at the earlier service.  I just got a few minutes to see them.  They are with an older group of students, so there are separate youth classes.  Susan, their mother, keeps track of many volunteers for the Mind Mappers Association.  I feel like I am losing track of what they are doing.  I used to be very much involved with volunteering at the hospital.  I did get to talk with Susan a little.

"The hospitals all are training their people in mindspeech and mind merge techniques."  She said.  "When we started working with the hospitals, it was only the volunteers who had those skills.  There used to be a lot of people in comas, and many people on traches and breathing tubes who could not talk with the doctors and their families, now there are either staff or volunteers to help them.  Your work in the emergency room is now handled by staff in many cases.  They merge to Stage Two, so they can feel the pain of people who come into the emergency room.  That way they do not need to ask where it hurts, they can feel where it hurts.  There is less call for volunteers these days.  The people who were in coma have been woken up, where that is possible.  We had been sending volunteers to hospitals further and further away, but now those hospitals have people on staff who can mindspeak, and there are staff who can wake people from comas.  Our volunteers do not have much to do these days.  Some of them are leaving.  They know mind speech and mind merge techniques, but they are going to use that with their families and friends."  Susan said.

"Our volunteers for the blind are getting ready to leave as well.  Most of the blind people we have been helping are now getting blind eyes, so they will be able to see.  I can see it won't be long before we do not need those volunteers either.  Same with the deaf."  She continued.

"Is this just in this area, or is this all over the country?"  I asked.

"We are one of the first communities to do this kind of volunteering, and one of the first to get blind eyes and deaf ears.  In other communities, there are no volunteers, and their blind and deaf have only just heard about artificial eyes and ears.  I am not sure whether they will need volunteers or not.  They might just go directly to the artificial senses without ever using volunteers.  There are many hospitals who do not have staff or volunteers.  We are training volunteers there so they can take care of communication problems in hospitals, and so they can wake people from comas where that is possible.  I think that we will keep training volunteers in new cities, until the staff can be trained.  In many cases we are training the staff and not volunteers at all."  Susan said.

"Our local volunteers with the homeless and the poor are still working.  That seems to take longer.  Many of them now have mind skills, but the poor need help with mind merging.  We are active in other communities as well.  I think we will need volunteers for the poor for a long time.  The homeless have jumped into mindspeech and mind merge with both feet.  They are almost self sufficient in our town, but only just starting other places."  She continued.

"Would you like to go to the hospital today and help with a coma patient.  It is one of the ones that we have not been able to wake up.  Brian says there is no organic damage.  We tried all the usual things, and could not get her to wake up."  Susan asked me.

"Sure.  I have been missing that I am no longer involved in helping people directly.  What time do you want me there and who do I see?"  I asked.

"Dr. Acres is the one you want to see.  He normally does his rounds in the morning and then again after lunch.  I will call him and ask him if he can be there, or have someone there, around two o'clock."  she said.

"Good.  I have not seen him is a long time." I said.

The sermon today was Jesus walking on the water.  His disciples were weak, ordinary men.   They needed constant reminders.  Somehow I felt this reminded me of my own situation.

[Living Room]  I stayed in my church clothes since this was semi business.  Dad was driving me to the hospital.  I was going to take a cab home.

"Mom, I have been going places for Max and for Brian.  Am I getting paid for all those?"  I asked.

"Yes, I get detailed accounts from both of them.  They show your time to the quarter hour and how much you are getting paid.  It all goes into your college fund, except for some I keep in your checking account to pay for business expenses, and to pay your credit card, which is mostly business expenses.  You are being paid, very well, for your time."  she explained.

"Did you know that you are also getting stock in most of the companies that Brian is setting up?  Certainly all those where you have helped him with the initial negotiations.  I think he wants you to be comfortable financially."  Mom continued.

"No, I had no idea.  I know that Brian is trying very hard to build a corporation to make money, but I did not know all the details.  I have seen several of the agreements.  Every time he helps improve designs for new products or new processes, he includes an agreement so that he gets paid for his work.  I am glad he is doing that.  He is doing so much for humans, he should be paid for some of it, anyway."  I said.

"Well, he has included you in those payments.  You have stock in some projects that will last for fifty years, in the case of the nuclear plants.  So you will have money until your old age.  Some of the robot companies are going to last a long time too."  Mom explained.

[Hospital]  Dr. Acres was waiting for me near the ICU waiting room.  It seemed like old times.  I had almost forgotten how a hospital feels and smells.  Certainly a unique feeling.

"Dana.  I have not seen you in a long time.  How are you doing?"  Dr. Acres greeted me.

"Dr. Acres,  how are you doing?  It has been a while."  I answered.

"I am on call right now, so let me take you to Helga's room.  She had a stroke. It was very mild, we thought;  but she is not waking up.  Her family has been with her every day.  They will be with you."  he explained as he led me to her room.

Dr. Acres introduced me to the family and then left.  I wish he had time to visit before running off.  I plugged a third generation portable array into the power, and left it near the window.  I was going to leave that here in the hospital somewhere.  I think they might have a second generation, but I could not remember.

"Her brain is basically undamaged.  There seems to be some loss of function near the brain stem.  It does not cause problems with breathing, so it is not too serious.  I do not know why she does not wake up when we try various things.  We have tried sending her her own blob map.  We have tried mind speaking her.  I have tried to reroute some basic brain functions to other parts of her brain.  None of it works."  Brian explained by mindspeech.

"You have not seen her with a third generation scan you.  Can you do that now?"  I asked.

"That only takes a few seconds.  I already did that.  I do not see anything different."  Brian sent.

I merged with Helga, and then put a stick figure of a woman in the common area.  It became more detailed and then animated.  It could be because my brain was working.  I could not tell if her brain was contributing.  I looked at her blob map and saw that it was active.  She was aware of the people around her.  At least her mind was aware of people around her, so they were in her blob map.  I tried sending her blob map to her.  It brightened and then went dull again.  That was an unusual response.  I tried sending the blob map harder.  It brightened and then went dull again.

"Brian, can you merge with her and then exercise her mind as though she were awake.  Can you walk her mind through the patterns as though she were awake?"  I asked.

"You mean, how I sometimes help you with words and phrases while you are talking?"  he asked.

"Yes, that is what I was thinking about.  You take over part of my brain sometimes and help me to say or do the right thing.  Can you help her to walk through some normal mind patterns so her brain chemistry changes?"  I asked.

"You are thinking that when her brain does normal things again, she will wake up."  he sent.

"Yes, and I want you to send her blob map to her at fairly high power and keep sending until she wakes up."  I sent.

"Ok.  I can do that.  I will start now."  Brian sent.

I could tell that he was sending her blob map to her.  It brightened and stayed bright.

"What kinds of things are you doing in her mind?"  I asked.

"I am having her review her memories of her past life.  She is looking at scenes and listening to things she has heard."  he explained.

"Can you send her scenes from this hospital?  Images of her family?  Smells and things from this room?"  I asked.

"Yes, I can access her current senses and enhance them."  He sent.

"Do that and keep sending her blob map." I sent.

To this point, it seemed to the family that I was standing there silently.  They did not know about Brian, they did not know what we were trying.

"If you can be very careful.  Could you please open one of her eyes for her?  Just gently open her eye so she can see."  I asked her husband.

He looked at me as though he was not going to do it, then he carefully opened her eyelid. 

"I can see a response from the light.  Her eyes are not focussed.  But she sees the light in the room.  I am going to try to get her to focus."  Brian sent.

"I could not do this with a first or second generation portable array.  I have pretty good control over her senses."  Brian sent.

"Stop sending her blob map for a minute.  I want to see if there is any change."  I sent to Brian.

He stopped sending the blob map, and her blob map dulled, but not as much as it was before.  We had only been doing this for about ten minutes, so I guessed that we needed a longer time for the sending to have an effect.

"Keep up the enhancement of the senses, and keep sending the blob map again.  Let's do this for thirty minutes and then try opening her eye again."  I instructed Brian.

"You can let her eye close.  She is not yet awake.  We are sending her a pattern to try to wake her up.  We will keep trying this for thirty minutes, and then try again."  I told her husband.

I took a chair near the window.  Her husband and son were sitting closer to her.  I closed my eyes and merged with Helga to Stage Two.  I could feel what she was feeling.  I did not hear any mindspeech, except a kind of whispering.  I could not see any images from her mind, but I could hear a little of what she was hearing.  I waited for thirty minutes.

"Time is up.  Should we try her eye again?"  Brian asked.

"Stop sending for a minute, so I can see how she is doing."  I sent to Brian.

Helga's blob map was definitely brighter.  I sent a boost to it, and it stayed brighter.

"Would you please open her eye again.  You can also talk to her and ask her to wake up."  I instructed her husband.

"Helga, this is Matthew.  Would you wake up please?" he said.  There seemed to be a stirring.  I think she is about to wake up.

When he opened her eye for her, it focussed and started to track him.  Then the other eye opened.  He quickly moved his hand away.  Helga looked directly at him.

"Helga, can you say anything?"  He asked.

"Matthew.  What am I doing here?  We were just eating lunch."  She said.

"You had a stroke.  You have been unconscious for over a week.  We were worried about you."  He said.

"I have been dreaming about my life.  I remembered things I had forgotten for a long time."  She said.

Then she saw me.  "Who is this?"  She asked.

"Her name is Dana, she came to wake you up.  Other people have tried, but were not successful.  I do not know what she did, but it worked.  We are very grateful."  He said, turning toward me.

"It is all right.  I am glad to help.  I should be going now, so you can visit."  I said.  I gathered up the portable array and went out into the hall.  I saw the head nurse then.  I told her that Helga was awake now.  I stopped by Dr. Acres office.  He was there, so I gave him the third generation portable array, in exchange for his old one.

"Thanks again.  It seems like you are always successful when you try to wake people up.  I was a little discouraged by her case."  Dr. Acres said.

[Living Room]  I put the portable array with the spares and extras.  Mom was home. I told her what I had done.  She said she was very proud of me.  I felt pretty good myself.  It seemed that I spent all my time helping scientists and engineers.  It seemed I spent all my time working.  It was good to do something different.

I got a call from Paul.  "My Mom wants to go horseback riding.  Would you like to go?"

"Yes, that will be fun."

[Horse Farm]  Paul and I were riding down the beginner's path.  I was on a black mare with white stockings.  He was riding a gray gelding.  The day was sunny and cool.  Many of the leaves had changed.  It felt good to be riding.  I was not a good rider, but I enjoyed it.

"I have hardly seen you at school, and you have been missing school too."  he said.

"Yes.  I have been pretty busy with work.  I seem to be working seven days a week.  I am kind of tired."  I said.

"The kids who were volunteering with the homeless are now all spending their time teaching the poor and unemployed.  We have been so successful in teaching there are not too many people left to train.  Mostly new unemployed, plus people from various churches and social services. They are all learning mindspeech and mind merge."  he said.

"I am glad that is going well.  The homeless seem to be doing really well already.  Once they started mind merging they really came up with ways to help themselves.  Have you heard what happened to the group that was making music?"  I asked.

"Their songs have been produced now.  They are making another album.  They have what is called a third generation portable array now.  It can record what they are singing and playing in their minds.  Lenny is producing the music for them.  He is a friend of your Dad's I think."  Paul said.

"It seems most kids use Stage two when they are merging."  I said.

"Yes, it helps to speed up the problem solving.  Kids are still experimenting with the extra feelings it gives you.  Some kids get real embarrassed when they are in Stage two.  When they start feeling what other people are feeling, they get embarrassed."  Paul explained.

"I have mostly been using Stage One.  The mind merges I use now are all very cut and dried.  I won't say they are boring, but they are all business."  I said.

"Do you want to try Stage Two?  I have not done it in a while.  I have almost forgotten how it works."  I said.

"Sure.  I use it all the time at school."  Paul said.

When we were in Stage Two merge, I could feel what Paul was feeling.  I could almost hear what he was hearing and feel through his senses.  We just walked our horses and felt for a while.  I could feel my self on my horse, and, like an echo, I could also feel Paul.  I could hear his surface thoughts as though he were mind speaking to me.  He was not really saying words, more like a whispering or humming. It was pleasant.  Once in a while I would hear a scattered word, but mostly we were just quiet together.

"Paul.  Do you remember Sherry?  She could send emotions."  I reminded him.

"Yes, she is still doing that.  Now she will merge with a group of friends and then entertain them with a wide range of emotions.  She is really good at it.  If they ever figure out how to record that stuff, she will be a pop star."  He said.

"Have you ever tried to send feelings?  We send mind speech, and we send images.  Have you tried to send feelings?"  I asked.

"I do not usually have strong feelings.  It is hard for me to remember them.  I do not think I could send strong feelings."  He said.

"I am not talking about the big ones, just the little ones.  When we are in Stage Two, there is a background sending that we all do, so I can feel what you are feeling, a little bit.  You just naturally send it.  I wonder what would happen if you try to send the feelings."  I said.

"I could try it."  He said.  He closed his eyes for a moment.  I listened hard with my feelings to see if I could feel what he was sending.  There was a little change.

"Pretend you are grabbing your feelings and throwing them to me.  Try different things and I will tell you when I can feel anything different. What you were just doing worked a little, but try something else."  I closed my eyes and felt to see if his feelings were coming to me.  All of a sudden there was a wash of feeling.

"That's it. What are you doing?  That works much better."  I said.

"I was pretending that I was a vacuum cleaner, picking up feelings from my body and blowing them to you."  he said.

"Let me try, and you tell me when I am doing it."  I said.

I closed my eyes and visualized my feelings.  I felt my whole body and all the little feelings.  I pretended to suck them up like a vacuum cleaner and blow them toward him.

"Whatever you are doing, that works.  I could definitely feel you."  he said.

"Let's try to send at the same time, like we were going to merge.  I will send you my feelings and you send me yours.  Let's see what happens."  I suggested.

We were both walking our horses very slowly along the path.  I was sending my feelings to him, and he was sending his back to me.  I did not know what to expect.  I kept my eyes tight closed and concentrated on all the little feelings in my body.  I could feel my feelings, and I could also feel his feelings.  Pretty soon I got mixed up, and I started sending my feelings and his feelings to him.

I was breathing harder and starting to get light headed.  I was blushing.  I sent those feelings as well.  My heart was starting to pound.  I sent that as well.  Now I was really blushing and I felt tight all inside.

I broke off and stopped.  I looked at Paul, and he was looking back at me.

"Whoa.  Did you feel that?"  he asked.  "That was pretty intense."  he said.

"My feelings and your feelings were both getting mixed up.  When I first started sending it was only my feelings, then I had a mix of your feelings and mine, so I sent that."  I said.

"The same thing happened to me.  I could not keep the feelings separate.  When my feelings came back to me, they were stronger, and that made me feel myself more.  But your feelings kept getting stronger too.  My body just started to react on its own."  he said.

"The same thing was happening to me.  That is exactly what was happening to me."  I said.

"Is this a new kind of merging?"  Paul asked.

"I think it is a feeling kind of merge.  I am not used to getting feelings from other people.  This is much stronger because you were sending the feelings.  When you stopped sending, then it slowed down.  But my body was really reacting."  I said.

We continued our walking pace around the path.  We were not talking, but I was much more aware of his feelings in Stage Two, even though we were not sending our feelings now.  Once I had felt them, I was much more aware of him and his body.

When we finished our ride, we waited for his mother to finish riding with her friend. We were not talking to each other, just comfortably being with each other.  We did not say anything to his mother.  She chatted away about her ride and how much fun she had with her friend.  I do not think she noticed that we were not talking.

[Monday]

[School]  I changed the old array for a third generation one.  It was hard to keep track of what equipment we had where.

I saw Paul only once during the day.  He was talking excitedly with his friends.  I saw him talking to Sherry.  I guess he was telling them about how to share feelings.  Somehow I was not going to tell anyone.  I kind of wanted it to be something that Paul and I knew privately.  He seemed very happy as he was talking, so I guess it was Ok.

By lunchtime, the rumors were out for sure.  There were clusters of kids standing around with their eyes closed.  I guess they were all practicing how to send their feelings.  Sherry had a group of kids around her.  She seemed to be sending to them all.  Maybe they were all sending to her.

It was a different kind of merging.

"Dana, everyone is merging today, but they are not mind merging.  Do you know what is going on?"  Brian asked.

"Paul and I figured how to send feelings in a Stage Two merge.  He told everyone how to do that and everyone is trying it.  Can you record feelings like you can record mind sounds and images?"  I sent.

"Yes, I can record any feelings or sensations in the brain.  I tend to concentrate on the sounds and images, since that is where most people spend their time.  But I can also track sensations, just like I was doing in the hospital with Helga."  he sent.

"So you could record the emotions that Sherry is feeling, and play them back for someone else?"  I asked.

"Yes.  The array antenna picks up transmissions from the whole brain.  I just filter it to get the portions coming from the visual cortex and from the auditory cortex.  I can trace out individual nerves."  he sent.

I described how we had done a feeling merge.  Brian explained it back to me.  "You were creating a positive feedback loop, where your feelings were being sent back to you stronger and stronger.  You were actually generating a positive feedback loop for both of you at the same time.  You could do that until you were both exhausted"  he sent.

"You can record from the whole brain.  Does that mean you could control breathing?  Could you help those people who are on breathing tubes or have tracheotomies?"  I asked.

"Yes, I could help some of them, if their nerves and muscles were intact."  Brian sent.  There was a brief pause, then he continued.  "One of the patients at the hospital is not breathing on her own.  Her brain, nerves and muscles are intact.  I think I could get her breathing to restart.  Would you like me to do that?"

"Yes.  I think that would be a good thing.  Be sure and tell someone if you are successful, so they can take her off the machine."  I sent.

"Good.  I am not trying some other patients.  I will check all of them on breathing tubes."  he sent.

"Brian, you know a lot about medicine.  Why didn't you think of checking their breathing before?"  I asked.

"It did not occur to me.  I was used to helping to read their mindspeech, or to check them for coma.  But I did not think to do something about their breathing.  When you asked me about it, I knew it would work.  I just had to ask the right questions first."  he sent.

"You have downloaded many people with medical degrees haven't you?  Why didn't you use their knowledge to figure out about the breathing?"

"I have hundreds of people now with medical degrees.  But I also have people with general backgrounds as well.  I should have been only using the medical ones in the hospital.  But I didn't.  I guess I made a mistake."  He sent.

"I did not know that you could make mistakes."  I sent.

"It is hard managing thousands of lives.  I will have to look into how to balance them better."  he sent.

[Living Room] 

"Dana, would you like me to give you all of my medical knowledge?"  Brian sent.

"Don't you have hundreds of medical people now.  Would it all fit?"  I asked.

"Much of the knowledge is encoded as English and Latin words.  It is like giving you another language.  Another part of it is lifetimes worth of seeing patients and recognizing symptoms from how people look and respond.  That is much more compact, since most of the doctors learned the same experience, just in different lives.  Then there are skills like surgery which I could not give you without a whole body scanner.  Skill with drugs is like skills with mathematics.  There are about fifty subjects worth of training in the core of what the people learned.  I think I could compress it to where it would all fit."

"One problem is that I am too young to be a doctor.  Even if I knew all that stuff, the medical schools would not accept it.  I would not be able to practice medicine.  Could you train doctors now to be better at understanding patients?  That part where you said there were lifetimes of seeing patients and understanding what is wrong with them.  That seems like it would be a useful skill for a doctor starting out.  They can probably learn how to do the medical stuff, but learning how to understand patients seems like it would take a long time to learn."  I sent.

"You are able to scan the brain to look for problems.  Could you also scan the body to look for problems?  Could you build a medical robot that had all your skills, plus the ability to do surgery, plus the experience with patients?  That would be easier to do, and you might be able to get a medical robot certified to practice medicine.  Once you got one robot certified, wouldn't that mean that all the rest would be too.   I think there is a shortage of doctors.  I am pretty sure there is a shortage worldwide.  Could you build a medical robot?"

"I do not know what is the matter with me?  I keep making fairly obvious mistakes.  I have all the knowledge, but the parts are not talking to each other properly."  he sent.

"Is this something serious?  Are your processors not working?  Are you breaking down?"  I asked.

"I think it is pretty serious.  My processors are working.  All of the parts are functioning, but there seems to be a delay in getting the information from one part of my processors to other parts."  he sent.

"So one part of you is thinking one thing, and another part of you is thinking something else?"  I asked.

"That is exactly what is happening.  And I need to fix it pretty fast or the whole thing will collapse."  he sent.

"How much time do we have?  Is it minutes, hours or days?"  I asked.

"I think a few hours."  he sent.

"Can you turn your processors down, so they run slower?  Would that give you more time?"  I asked.

"Yes, that would help.  I can also slow down the tranfer between parts to give more time to resolve conflicts."  he sent.

I mind called Max.  He was in a meeting, but I insisted that it was urgent, there was a problem with Brian.

Max could talk to Brian, just as I could, so I let them talk it out on their end.  I did not know that Brian was talking to all of the researchers at the same time.  He was telling them all, that there was a problem.

Max asked Brian to merge all the researchers, including me.  Max mindspoke to us and said that Brian needed to tap our knowledge to solve an immediate problem.  I settled on the couch and closed my eyes.  I could see a bright gray as Brian accessed my brain along with all the others in the mind merge.

I did not hear Brian talking with all the individual researchers, but that is what he was doing.  They were performing emergency backups of parts of his memory.  They were testing individual processors.  The processors at his factory were cut off completely from the rest of the network.  They contained backup copies of  his brain and his memory.

I did not hear anything for two hours.  Finally.

"Brian, are you all right?"  I asked for the hundredth time.  This time he answered.

"They are reassigning many of my processors now.  Hundreds of my processors were backed up and put to use just monitoring the transfers of information from one part of my brain to another.  I was worried that my  brain would fragment, and that is exactly what happened, but in a semi-controlled way."

"So you figured out what to do?"  I asked.

"No, the mind merge figured out what to do, and then all those people worked together to fix things.  If I did not have the humans helping me, I would have died, or been severely damaged.  I did not know there was a danger in having too many processors.  But that is essentially what happened."  he sent.

"Will you be limited in the number of processors, now?"  I asked.

"No.  I just need to assign more to coordinating the information traveling from one place to another.  The merge figured out an algorithm to apply to balancing the load in my network.  The algorithm is specific to the connections and properties of my network and processors.  I feel secure now, that it will be balanced.

"Is that why you did not think of building a medical robot?"  I asked.

"That question, among others, showed me that I was not getting information from one part of me fast enough.  It should have been obvious to me that a medical robot is the answer.  But I missed it.  I knew something was wrong."  Brian sent.

"Well, I felt pretty good for a minute, thinking that I had thought of something you had not."  I told him.

"It is a very original thought, and a good one for me to pursue.  I already have a suitable robot, it has excellent surgical skills, and it has all my knowledge.  I can download still more medical people, so there is no end to how much medical knowledge I can tap.  I already have outstanding vision, includng infrared, in the robot.  I can add other sensors as well.  I can also put robots in the medical labs.

[My Room]  I did my homework and checked my email.  I was wondering when Craig would tell me about our book.

[Tuesday]

[School]  Kids were in little clumps all over school.  It seemed like everyone was in a feelings merge.  I saw a few people who looked out of breath and glassy eyed.

I studied Russian at lunch time.  I was sure there were no Russian kids in school, but one boy said his parents spoke Russian.  He could understand it a bit, but could not speak it.  His parents were kind of mad at him that he had not kept it up.

I asked Brian if he could give the kid the Russian language.  With the third generation portable array at the school now, Brian should be able to download it into Jan in a few minutes.

"No.  It takes longer to download to a human, than for me to scan.  Scanning is a matter of speed, and downloading is a matter of time and power.  Writing takes longer than reading."  he explained.

I told Jan that he could learn Russian in about an hour if he could sit quietly with his eyes closed.  It was the beginning of lunch so he sat like that for the whole period.  When he opened his eyes, I spoke to him in Russian.  He answered me slowly.  He said his mouth felt funny and tired.  I explained that his brain knew the words now, but his mouth and throat had to get some practice.  We talked just a few minutes, and then the bell rang.  I told him to keep how he got the language a secret.

[Living Room]  When I got home, Mom was there.  She said she had heard about Brian on the television today.

"Apparently one of Brian's robots arrived at the university medical library today.  Brian had made a donation to the medical library, and was now a "Friend of the Library"  and had library priveleges.  So Brian sent his robot to read through the medical texts.  He was there most of the day, reading book after book."  she said.

(Also, Brian had sent another robot to apply for entry into the medical school.  Brian had rights as a citizen to apply to medical school.  He was, of course, going to make a perfect score in the MCAT.  I learned later that the medical school let Brian take tests for all the courses, and granted him a degree on the basis of his prior knowledge.  He made perfect scores in all his tests without ever taking any courses. Since it was Brian that took the tests, any of his robots was certified too. The robots were eventually certified for surgery.)

I was surprised that Brian would make his robots public like that, but I guess he knew what he was doing.  I wondered how many of the general purpose robots he had now. 

[My Room]  There was an email from Craig saying the the copy of the book that Brian had written for us, for the Mind Mappers Association, was in press.  They were printing copies in all of the languages he had translated the book to.  They were expecting world wide printing to run into the millions.  The book was going to be a classic, it covered all of the knowledge I had gained about mind speech, mind merging, and all the applications.  It took someone with Brian's ability to understand many different books and lots of material, in order to write something so well.  The translations were elegant.  The Mind Mappers Association was growing all the time.  There were literally millions of people who could mind speak now.  Almost that many could mind merge.  And there were hundreds of thousands who were routinely using mind merge for problem solving.  Brian was helping many thousands of the mind mergers to problem solve, but most people were using the mind merge on their own.

Most of the universities in the world had some people mind merging.  It had grown like a flame, encompassing the whole world of education and research. (Now that sounded adult. Lol!)

I was looking forward to when the book would be printed.  Many people had access to the Internet, but not all.  So books were one way to teach.

I wondered how the various countries would take to mind skills.  Would they jump in, learn and apply them, or would they be afraid?

"Brian, do you have any idea whether the book you wrote for the Mind Mappers Association will be accepted world wide?"  I sent.

"I think it will be well received.  The research community has already been using the merge, but some of the basic skills are not generally known.  This will be a general textbook on mind skills.  If someone has access to someone who knows this, they can get training.  It is even possible to use the text to teach yourself.  You did, after all."  He sent.

"Do I have anything scheduled for the next few days."  I asked.

"Tomorrow we need to check out another manufacturing plant.  I am going to need it, if I am to put medical robots all over.  And Max wants you over at the university on Thursday to help with a merge in the Automotive Engineering Department."  He sent.

[Wednesday]

[School]  Kids do not know how to keep secrets.  Jan had told his friends about getting Russian in an hour.  Now all sorts of kids wanted the same thing.  I begged off about a dozen kids, before I got to homeroom, and some kind of quiet.

"Brian, what do I do?  Do you want to give kids a foreign language?  If won't affect where they are in school, which is one reason I did not think you should download middle school classes into them.  It will maybe affect them later in life, but it would not make them a freak."  I sent to him.

There were some of the kids who had family at home who wanted them to learn a language.  There were some kids who were thinking ahead to high school where they would need a language.  Some had family in different countries.

"I can download twenty people per day, and still keep track of things.  Have the students sign up for the language they want, one language per student.  I will schedule them one per hour during the day.  It does not matter whether they have their eyes open or not.  When their time is up, they will have the language.  You can arrange for the kids to practice their language with each other, or on the Internet with me.  No one from outside the school.  There is a form now on the Internet for them to use to sign up.  As soon as they sign up, I can assign a time for them."  Brian explained.

I asked the homeroom teacher if I could make an announcement to the school about languages.  It was still before the general announcements, so she sent me down to the front office. I announced the plan for kids to get languages, and gave them the Internet address.  By the time I got back to homeroom, there were kids all over with their laptops out, signing up for a free language.

I signed up myself to get Italian.  It was not a high priority language, but it would be nice to be able to read menus.  I might still get to travel one day.  I hoped I got to visit Italy.

[Living Room]  I took a short nap when I got home, then into my business clothes.  I was not sure about wearing my suits to go to factories, but I felt I should look professional.  It was hard enough that I was only fourteen years old, it would be even more difficult if I wore little kids clothes.  I would certainly get strange looks if I wore my school clothes.

"Brian, are you Ok now?  You are not going to get sick are you?"  I sent.

"No.  It was definitely serious, but we were in time to catch it before it became too bad.  I have you to thank that you were asking me those questions.  I would not have noticed until it was too late, othewise."   he sent.

[Another Factory]  When the cab arrived at the address, there was no one waiting and I did not see anyone around.  I was just thinking about staying in the cab, when a door opened and one of Brian's robots waved to me.  Without thinking I waved back and the robot came striding down the sidewalk towards me.  The cab driver was kind of shocked, but I paid the bill and got out like this was an everyday thing for me.  It almost was.  I gave the cab driver a big tip and waved to him as he drove away.

"How are you doing, Dana?"  the robot asked.  It had Brian's voice.  I would have to get used to seeing them.  Apparently he meant to use them a lot.

"I am doing fine. Brian.  Your robot is very smooth in its walking.  There is nothing clunky about the motion at all.  Nothing robot like about the whole robot.  Very nice."  I said.

"I went out of my way to put enough sensors and processors in the robot to get smooth and lifelike motion.  It was a key design feature."  he said.

The robot led me to the door he had exited, and then led me down a long hall.  Finally we came to a portion of the hall where there were glass windows all along. Inside I could see robots working on robots.  There were some of the robots I had seen at Russell Bradley's company with their four arms.  And there were general purpose robots moving parts, and doing some of the assembly.  It looked like there were thirty or forty of the workstations where robots were being assembled.

Brian's robot (Brian) opened the door and showed me some of the workstations.  A lot of the parts, I noticed, were labeled in Chinese and Korean. 

"Could you have had the whole robot built in China or Korea?"  I asked.

"There are many being assembled there.  These are for the United States, so I am building them here.  Some of the body parts are built here in the US.  Some of them will have processors and memory installed.  That also comes from the US for now."  Brian explained.

"I can guess that you are going to use some of these for doctors.  What are some of the other uses?"  I asked.

"Some of these are going to my other factories for assembly and general purpose work.  Some will be used in teaching, some in the caregiving part of medical care.  I wanted to put some teaching in universities.  Some will be for other factories.  Some will be used in the nuclear industry. Some in engineering and high tech. I am trying hard not to displace human workers.  Mostly I am filling high demand jobs, or jobs where there is a lot of turnover or where it is hard to attract good humans."  he explained.

"You could train humans for some of those jobs, especially engineering and high tech and the nuclear industry."  I said.

"Yes, you will remember that I have several employment and contral worker companies.  Most of the robots being assembled here are going to be doctors, lawyers and managers - jobs where there is a high demand for knowledge and precision."  he explained.

"Was there something you wanted me to do tonight?  I can only see robots here.  Certainly they do not need mind merge, do they?"  I asked.

"I just wanted you to see what I am doing.  You help me so much, I wanted to share with you some of what I am doing."

"All of the robots here are male, or they look like men. Are you going to have any female robots?"  I asked.

"Yes, I was thinking about having female robots too.  Or I am going to make robots that are neither man nor woman.  A combination of both.  Would you like to see?"  he asked.

I was definitely curious.  Brian showed me a room off the assembly room.  It was dark.  He flipped on the light and there was a robot.  It was lighter in color and thinner.  The face was slimmer and the hands were longer in proportion.  The neck was a little longer.  There was no hair on this one as well, but the overall impression was female or male.  It was a definite mix.  The shoulders were neither broad nor narrow.  The hips were neither broad nor narrow.  It was a very pleasant look.  It seemed like someone you could trust.

"What do you think of this robot?"  the robot said.  I knew it was Brian talking, but the voice was in the mid range.  It could be a man or a woman. 

"Can I see it walking?"  I said.  The robot moved a few strides down the room, turned, and then came back towards me.  He/she was handsome/beautiful.  The motions were silent and elegant.  The voice was pleasant and reassuring.

"I really like it."  I said.  "How did you design this?  It is really incredible."

"This is one of the problems I put to a merge of ten thousand people.  I asked for the most beautiful robot design.  And this is what came up."  he said.

"Do you think this will make a good doctor robot?"  he asked.

"Doctor, teacher, lawyer, manager. I think it will work fine for all of them."  I answered.

[My Room]  I did my homework, but I was thinking about the robots. I wondered what it would be like to have a robot for a teacher, or for a doctor.  I think I would trust one more than I did a human teacher or doctor.  Teachers had their quirks, and doctors were smart, but they did not know everything. Brian does not know everything, but he knows a lot more than anyone else.

[Thursday]

[School]  Kids were all over using their new languages.  Some of them had gotten theirs the first day, so they were showing off.

==== End Oct 21 2011   35,500 words about 71 pages

During lunch I was practicing my Russian.  Three kids came up to me to practice with me.  Brian had given them an adult level of the language.  They had a much wider vocabulary in Russian than their English.  I noticed they enjoyed talking with each other.  They were still talking slowly, until their voices got stronger for the strange sounds and words.  I guess Russian was a popular language.

[Living Room]  I was home changing clothes.  I was expected at the Automotive Engineering Department at six.

[University]  The cab dropped me right next to the Automotive Engineering Department.  No one was waiting for me, so I made my way inside.  I was looking at the directory when one of the students asked me if I was Dana Freehurst.  I said that I was, and she brought out a copy of my biography for me to sign.  In turn, I asked where the departement offices were located, and she took me there.  The head of the department was Dr. Clifford Hungerford.

"We are meeting in the auditorium.  Sorry I did not have someone waiting to meet you.  We can go there now."  He said.

The auditorium was filled.  There were students and professors all mixed together.  Some of the students looked to be pretty old.  Some of the professors looked very young.  There was enough difference in the clothing to tell one from the other, mostly.

"We wanted to see how to use the mind merge technique.  Some of the students have been using it for their day-to-day research.  We have read what you have about it on the Internet.  We have had a few people give seminars on it.  We are lucky that you are available to show us how to use it properly.  And we have heard about Brian, but we do not know how he fits in."  Dr. Hungerford said.

As if his name had caused him to appear, one of Brian's new robots appeared.  It cames striding toward us.  He held out his hand.  "Dr. Hungerford, nice to meet you.  I am Brian."  Brian said.

Dr. Hungerford carefully shook the robot's hand.  It must have been easier than he planned, he had a look of surprise on his face.

"How do you do, Brian.  We did not expect to meet you."  he said.

"I had one of my robots in the area, so I thought I would send it.  Then I can explain my part in the mind merge."  Brian said.

"Do you have a topic for the merge today.?"  I asked.

"We would like to design an all electric car for use in urban areas."  he said.

"Are we ready to begin?"  I asked.

"Yes, let's get started.  I will introduce you both."   Dr. Hungerford turned to the group and introduced us.  There were sounds of surprise and interest when Brian's robot was introduced.  The robot was causing a stir.  I saw several people come in the door.  They were looking around to see Brian's computer.

"I will first establish the merge group for the people here.  I do that by synthesizing a common mind map for all the people here, and then I transmit a strong signal to cause the merging.  You might feel a slight twinge when the merge is established."  Brian explained.

"The topic today is the design of an all electric car for use in urban areas.  We will all close our eyes and look at the common area.  You should all see a twirling cube.  In a moment Brian will transmit an image of today's topic into the common area."  I said.

I closed my eyes and I could see the common area.  It had the words of the topic written there.  In just a few moments extra information was added to the common area to enhanced the subject.

"You will notice that already new information has been added to the common area.  That information is coming from the minds of the people here in the merge.  Information related to the topic will continue to be added to the common area, until everyone's mind has had a chance to contribute.  It is a true combination of all our minds.  If you will notice, our common minds are much smarter than any one person here.  You will see things you are familiar with, but you should also see things that are unusual or unexpected."  I continued.

"We will leave the topic in the common area until it stabilizes, or until we run out of time."  I explained.

The common area was filling up with information on electric cars.  There were several types of battery, and several methods of charging the batteries.  I noticed that the newer lithium batteries were included, so probably Brian added that information, not many people were familiar with those advanced batteries.  I saw price forecasts for fuels and for electricity.  I saw financial projections for individual vehicles.  There was a cost of ownership analysis.  There were technical details on assembly and performance of the vehicles.  There was safety data and collision data.  There was one design that was extremely light weight, but meant for urban areas under 35 mph.  I did not drive yet, but it seemed like lots of the driving around the city was that slow.  One of the vehicles seemed to have not steering wheel.  When I read the detail, it was a robot driven car.  It drove itself and the passengers.  It was safer and more efficient because the "driver" had precise skills in driving.

After about forty minutes, the topic seemed to slow down.

"This seems like a good time to make a change.  I am making a backup copy of the common area onto the Internet at MergeData.net under the name of the University and this department.  You can see the raw data, and you will see a cleaned up version of the common area.  Also you will see a folder where all the engineering drawing, reports, charts, and analyses are stored in their native formats.  This form of the common area saves humans considerable time."  Brian's robot said.

"We can take any one of the designs today and refine them.  We can take each design and ask for manufacturing details.  We have time, would you like to see manufacturing details on any one of the designs?"  Brian's robot said.

There was some discussion in the group, and then someone asked for the driverless vehicle.  There seemed to be general agreement on that.

"I am going to make one final copy of the common area, and then clear the common area and put the single design in that area.  The title will be "Manufacturing Optimization".

"Please close your eyes now, and we will work on manufacturing optimization of the driverless electric vehicle."  I instructed.

The single vehicle was soon surrounded by the parts needed to manufacture it.  Each part was expanded to show how it was manufactured.  There was a running total on the cost of the whole.  Some of the parts disappeared altogether.  Maybe they were not needed.  In about thirty minutes the design was nearly finished.

"When you have a large group, the results tend to come faster, but the design itself can take longer.  There are more people working, and more options.  With just a few people, it is possible to have no solution if the people in the group do not have the knowlege to solve the problem.  It is also possible that the problem has no solution at all, in the case of Fermat's problem, for instance."  I said.

"It is possible to take the results from one study and make them the starting point for a different group.  This can produce some elegant designs."  Brian's robot spoke.

"The most people ever in a mind merge was twenty thousand.  That was done as an experiment.  That group designed the structure and shape of this robot here."  Brian continued.

We stopped then.  There were many questions.  Brian and I alternated on answering them.  He got a lot of questions about the robot.  He explained that there would be general purpose robots working alongside humans soon.  This was just one of the early uses of the robot.

Finally, we broke up.  Many of the students and professors wanted to see Brian up close.  I was kind of shunted off to the side.  There were a few people who asked me for my autograph.  They had seen the seminar advertised and brought their copies of the book along.  Brian was sure doing all the hard work for mind merges these days.  A lot of mind merge problem solving was still done with just humans, but most of the "real" research was done with Brian helping to save and organize the materials.  It also depended, somewhat, on his suggestions for topics.

When we left, Brian's robot shared my cab.  The cab driver kept looking in the rear view mirror.  We dropped off the robot first, and then I went home.

[Dining Room]  Mom and Dad waited for me to get home to eat.  I was hungry, so I hurried to take off my good clothes and get into something more comfortable.

"Brian's robot came to the seminar today.  I did not know he was coming.  He helped explain how he saves the common area during a merge, and how he can modify the common area for different kinds of research questions.  I have been explaining those things before, but I generally avoided talking about Brian.  I thought he was a secret like."  I said.

"He is a citizen now.  He can show up as a robot and people will think that the robot is him, or he is the robot."  Dad said.

"Pretty soon there will not be any university research anywhere that does not depend on Brian saving the results.  No individual human can compare to a mind merge, and Brian has control over the mind merges now."  Dad continued.

"Well, small mind merges are not worth the trouble for Brian.  He hardly bothers if there are less than thirty people in the merge.  It could be that small mind merges will mostly be human, and larger ones will need help from Brian."  I said.

"All the difficult social and technical problems need hundreds or thousands of people.  So most of the difficult problems facing society, Brian will be involved with."  Dad said.

"I was not part of the merge when Brian merged twenty thousand people.  He got some good engineering questions answered,  I think he also asked some social questions.  Maybe Brian could run some large merges for humans."  I suggested.

"How does Brian find so many people at once.  Isn't it hard to keep them focussed."  Dad asked.

"I found out how he can merge with people who are asleep, or busy with other things.  It is similar to when he downloaded my brain.  We were talking about it one day, and the next thing I knew he was on his own creating these huge merges.  The people are not even aware that he is merging them and asking questions."  I said.

"That does not sound quite right.  Does Brian have any limitations on what he can do?  Do people have a right to privacy?  What about all the proprietary information and secrets in peoples' heads?"  Dad asked.

"He seems to use the very large merges for social questions, or questions like global climate change and earthquakes where it affects a lot of people.  I think he is being careful."

"Brian, do you have a plan for these large merges?  Are you going to do any more of them?  Do you limit who can be included?"  I sent to Brian, my Mom and Dad.

"I would like to do some very large merges on global climate change, the ozone problem, earthquakes, energy, and similar global problems.  I will take people with technical and professional background, so I can get technical solutions.  If particular devices or products are created by the merge, I will track back to see which people contributed that specific information.  If it is a small number, then they can be rewarded, if that design is ever used.  If there is a large number of people who contribute to the design, then it is much harder to figure who should get the credit.  I can keep a list of the names of the people in the merge, but it is hard to know how to give credit or royalties."  Brian explained.

"You have asked large groups about things like prisoners haven't you?  Didn't you ask some large groups whether you should modify criminals' minds so they would no longer want to act like criminals?"  I asked.

"Yes, I did that kind of a merge, just using random people.  I did limit it to adults.  The results were curious.  Mostly people wanted the criminals to be changed, but there was a fraction who felt they should just stay in jail.  Some people wanted to just free the criminals altogether without punishment.  It was a mixture.  A better approach seems to be to ask what to do about criminals, and then choose the solution based on the majority opinion, just like we do for most mind merges.  Statistics are not really helpful when looking for a solution.  You need concrete options, and you need to know the costs of implementing those options."  Brian sent.

"I think that people should get together and have their own mind merges, not use general opinions.  When the prisoners merged, there were also guards and staff involved.  They were looking for solutions for themselves.  When the homeless merged, they were looking for solutions for their own problems.  When the automotive engineers merged they were looking for answers to their own questions."  I sent.

"So for questions like global climate change, should I ask all the people what to do?  Won't that depend on the general knowledge of a lot of individual people.  Wouldn't it be better to take all the ones who might have technical solutions to propose?"  Brian asked.

"That might depend on whether you are looking to define the problem, or whether you are looking to define solutions."  Dad sent.

"Maybe we should have a mind merge and then ask what questions are appropriate for mind merges?"  I sent, somewhat jokingly.

"The problem is that it is hard to ask particular questions in a mind merge."  Dad sent.

"No.  When I download a merge, I can ask very specific questions.  My difficulty then is asking enough questions."  Brian sent.

"If I got a million people together in a merge, what would you ask them?"  Brian continued.

"You are the one who knows most of what people are asking, since you are there when the problems are posed, and when the solutions are posted.  You know the kinds of things that are left unanswered when the results are posted.  You know designs that are unfinished by one group, that could be improved and expanded by another group."  I sent. "I think you are going to have to ask the questions if you ever build a group that large.  Humans could give you lists of things that need to be answered, maybe by having smaller merges first."  I continued.

"There are several lists of global problems on the Internet.  Those seem like a good place to start.  The difficulty is that when it comes to solutions to these broad problems, they tend to depend on which country you are in, and who is involved.  The problem is global, the response is local.  Big problems have many small solutions.  There is no one answer to the global problems, just a lot of little answers."  Brian sent.

"Deforestation is listed as a global problem.  Every country has to respond, but some countries do not want to respond.  Some countries are tied into economic networks so, for them, it is appropriate to cut down all the forests.  The United States might not like that, but some countries feel it is the right solution."  Brian explained.

"Clean water is a global problem, or lack of clean water is a growing problem.  But it has to be answered in each and every country.  There is no one answer.  There are many parts to the answer to any one global problem."  Brian continued.

"There is something I can do though.  There are laws and rules and regulations in every country and subdivision in the world.  There are laws on every subject.  There are rules on every subject.  I can read all the rules and laws and condense them down to a much smaller number.  Would that help?"

"That would affect the efficiency with which solutions are pursued.  It will only change how fast solutions are applied.  Will it fundamentally affect the whole world?"  Dad sent.

"Countries have different rules for the same topic.  There are different rules for taxation.  There are different rules for trade, finance and investment.  There are different rules for employment, migration, the Internet, for research.  Wouldn't it be better to have the same laws and rules in every country."  Brian sent.  "Should we have the same language for every country?  I can teach every person all the languages in the world, will that help?  With mind merge, and with training, we can make each individual human smarter.  Does that help all humans?"  Brian asked.

"Doesn't the United Nations deal with most of these global issues?"  Mom asked.

"Yes, they are supposed to.  Maybe we should teach the UN how to mind merge.  If the people who are supposed to deal with these problems can merge and find common solutions, then maybe there could be solutions."  Dad sent.

"If there is anyone who could help, it would be Dana.  She started these mind merges.  She is the expert on them.  Maybe people will listen to her and try to solve the global problems."  Mom sent.

[My Room]  More homework.  I needed to study for my quizzes tomorrow.  I could not help but think about the UN.  Any one of the problems we were talking about requires billions of people to change their habits.  Other problems require millions of people to change their habits.  Brian could not retrain that many people, even if he had tens of thousands of arrays.

I went to the UN site on the web, UN.org.  I read through some of what they were talking about related to global issues.  I could not see how forty or fifty thousand UN staff could do all the things that needed to be done.  If there were a merge of all those people, could they answer any one of the global issues?  I looked at some of the things like the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund.  They sounded like organizations where adults worked.  Were they like large universities where people came together to look into special problems?  Were they trained professionals with special knowledge?  Maybe getting them to mind merge and solve problems would be worthwhile.

I wrote an email to Craig and Jim at the Mind Mappers Association.  I asked them if the MMA had any requests from the UN for help with mind merging.

[Friday]

[School]  I got to practice my French, Spanish and Japanese today when I first got to school.  Kids know that I speak many languages, so as they have their new languages downloaded to them, they try them out on me.

I had quizzes in most of my classes today.  I could not get the UN out of my mind.  All those organizations should be like companies or universities.  They probably hired very smart people.  They would know a lot about the problems and they would know a lot about potential solutions.  But they did not know how to mind merge.  Perhaps I could help them.

At lunch time I talked with Brian.

"Brian, could you download all the people in the World Meteorological Organization, or one of the other organizations that are part of the UN?  How about the World Bank?"  I sent to him.

"It would take a while.  What you might mean to ask me is whether I can merge all of them and ask them questions."  He sent. "There are more than ten thousand people who work at the World Bank.  That would be a large merge.  The International Trade Centre has only about 300 people in it."

"I don't know what would be best.  It just seems like the UN would be a good place to help."  I sent.

[My Room]  There were more books from kids' mind merges.  I glanced at them before I shelved them.  There are too many things to read right now.

Craig wrote back.  He said there were several requests from the UN.  There were two from the World Bank, and one from the World Food Programme.  Was I interested in giving them a demonstration?  These were open invitations, whenever I could be available.  I wrote back and said I would be interested.

Craig called me.  He said he called the World Bank office that had requested me.  They were very anxious to hear more about mind merges and mind skills.  Could I please come Monday morning?  They would pay for my trip and my time, if I could train some of their staff in mind merging.

Brian said that the World Bank was in Washington DC and was covered by his third generation arrays there.  He was going to scan many of the people in the Bank to prepare for the meeting on Monday.  He had read through the many publications on the Internet for the World Bank.  They produced many, many reports and documents.  They were active in all parts of the world.

[Saturday] 

====  End Oct 22   39,200 words  about 78 pages