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7 Minutes
        “Short resistor 27 to the collector of transistor 42.” He muttered the directions to himself again. “Open access panel 14. Two Phillips screws on each side. Short resistor 27 to transistor 42. The cargo door will open in 3 seconds. Walk 3 paces forward into the cargo hold. Emergency O2 masks are 12 paces to the right. Tuck yourself into the straps of a cargo crate. You will touch down 850 seconds after drop. Exit the door and close it behind you. Run 3/4 km west of the landing site. Our man will meet you there. Move quickly. The collection crew will arrive 15 minutes after touchdown. Don’t let them see you.” 
The ship’s PA system cut through his thoughts: “7 minutes until extraorbital cargo drop. Crew, exit cargo dock Bravo immediately and seal airlocks.”
Time to move. He slipped through the metal doors into the narrow space between the wall of the cargo dock and the outer shell of the Extraorbital Descent Transport. The outer wall of the EDT was blacked and charred by the abuses of numerous re-entries. A pair of hydrazine chemorockets graced each side on the EDT, ready to unleash a torrent of fire and float the transport to a gentle landing. Set in between the rockets, two hatches held retractable wings that would deploy once the transport broke into the lower atmosphere.
“Cargo dock Bravo airlocks are secured. Extraorbital cargo drop in 6 minutes.”
He began walking towards the EDT’s rear access door. There, to the right of the door was the access panel. He drew the screwdriver from his pocket and began working the screws to remove the panel. The metal sheet clattered to the floor, presenting him with the circuit board that controlled the access door.
Staring at the orderly nest of circuitry pulled him back to his childhood, his father’s repair shop in the favela on Novoposto. He had lived with his father in a small aluminum shack abutting on the garage; his mother had run off after he was born. One day, while his father was out, he had stumbled into the shop and began fiddling with one of the electric scooters, swapping out the batteries and reaffixing the leads as he had seen his father do. When his father returned and caught him, he exploded in a fit of rage: “Menino, why are you in here! How many times have I told you to stay out of my shop! Sai!”
He scampered out, and father went over to inspect the damage. As he bent down, he put his hand on the throttle, and the wheels roared to life, spraying gravel and dust. Though this halo of filth, the boy’s father looked down, his expression completely changed. “Menino, you fixed it! But how?”
From that day on, he was his father’s assistant in the shop, and soon surpassed the old man’s skill. His father saw that the boy had a special gift, and was destined for something beyond the dirty little bike shop. With all his savings, he sent the boy off to boarding school in his 13th year. Every year, the boy won scholarships to pay for the next round of classes. By his 16th birthday, he won admission to study Electrical Engineering at the best technical university in the Second Fringe.
“Extraorbital cargo drop in 5 minutes.”
He began surveying the circuitry for resistor 27. Twenty seven. A number so laced in memories. Building 27, the run-down computing lab on the edge of campus. Building 27, where he had found his home. The first year of university had been a struggle for him. Classes were no difficulty, but the poor boy who eagerly blurted the answer to every question made few friends. He had no grounding in their mannerisms and culture, and floated though his days isolated and alone.
Then they came to him. Marcus and Jon. A disheveled looking pair of twins, with piercing, determined eyes. “We saw the work you did with neural networks in the CS lab. That was nice. Real nice. We think we may have an opportunity for you. You interested?”
“What is it?”
“We can’t exactly talk about that. It’s best we show you. Meet us here after classes tomorrow.”
He returned at the appointed time, eager and nervous. Marcus and Jon appeared, and led him to the eastern edge of campus, to Building 27.
“Until you commit to joining us, we can’t disclose the location of our lab. It’d be easier if you put this over your eyes,” Jon said, handing him a black handkerchief. Blindfolded, he was lead down a twisting series of corridors, up and down several flights of stairs.
“Extraorbital cargo drop in 4 minutes.”
When he removed the cloth, he was in a disorderly room, a little larger that the footprint of a house. A server rack against the back wall held a stack of computing units. Several workstations with keyboards and oversized, aging monitors resided on an adjacent desk. The right wall contained a soldering station, an additive printer, and a dozen padlocked cabinets. Ventilation hoses sprung forth from the left wall into an expensive-looking air filtration system. A door led to what appeared to be an improvised clean room on the other side of the wall. In the center of the room sat a large stack of cardboard boxes and shipping crates, each marked “BIOSUPPLY.”
“So what is this place?” he asked suspiciously.
“It’s our lab,” they replied in unison. Marcus continued, “We’re making AI.”
“Mentira. Inteligence requires quantum uncertainty to perserve free will. And quantum computing was proved to be materialistically impossible in the early 2000s. True AI is a fool’s errand. All legitimate researchers gave up on it nearly half a millenium ago.”
“We are well aware of the sorry state of our field. But that impossiblity assumes conventional silicon or lightgate circuits.”
“What else would you use instead?”
“The human mind manages intelligence with a finite number of electrochemical relays.”
“That,” Jon interjected, “is why we’re interested in your work with simulated neural networks. We want to build the real thing.”
“But that requires human cloning ... which is why I can’t know where your lab is. You aren’t going to harvest my maldito brain, are you!?”
“No no no,” Marcus said reassuringly. “We admit to have an interest in your brain, but for its knowlegde, not its cells.”
Jon continued: “We’ll be doing preliminary tests with mice. If those go well, we have a contact at the hospital who can get us the necessary materials,” Jon explained discretely.
“So where do I fit in to this?”
“Marcus does biosignaling and cognition. I work on the software signal processing end. But we need an EE to design the neural-electrical interface. Your work with neural networks means you have an idea of how the whole system will fit together.”
Marcus added, “we have a contact who pays for all our materials. He gets 50% of any marketable product we produce. We’re prepared to split the other 50% with you, in even thirds.”
“Extraorbital cargo drop in 3 minutes.”
He found resistor 27. He began delicately threading the wire down towards it. Steady hands. A few more millimeters.
“Steady hands” Marcus told him as he threaded the biopsy needle though the child-cadaver’s temple. “A few more millimeters. There, look at the ultrasound, you’re in. Take the sample.”
He depressed the button and began withdrawing the needle. The hour-dead body was still warm against his hands.
“Done. Get this back to the ICU agora!” Jon barked at the nervous-looking orderly.
Finally, they had the cells. The trials with mice had gone exceedingly well. In only two years they had made a neural bio-circuit that could perform basic image recognition and navigate a maze. They had spent the past 6 months waiting for the perfect human case. It had to be a child, to ensure maximum neural plasticity. And it had to die quickly, with minimal brain damage. And it had to come to the right ICU, at the right time, when their contact was on call.
But tonight, all those pieces had fallen into place. They had their cells. Marcus would spend the next month cloning the cells into the network pattern, while he and Jon designed and printed an upgraded interface. Soon everything was in place, and the network calibration began.
“Extraorbital cargo drop in 2 minutes.”
He connected the wire to transistor 42. A pause. The most excruciating 3 seconds of his life. Then the door came to life, opening up the cargo bay of the transport.
Trial configuration number 87. Jon initiated the network. A pause. The most excruciating 500 milliseconds of their lives, repeated for the 87th time. But this half-second was different. The microscope display flashed to life. The neural network was alive, pulsing. Nature dancing in rhythm with manmade circuitry. Two weeks of coding: basic I/O. Two more weeks: pattern recognition. They worked 20 hours a day, and ceased going to classes. Three more weeks: face recognition. Six more weeks: general image identification. Three more months: basic conversation. Four more months: general interpretation of low-level natural language. Two more weeks: score of 75 on a human IQ test. Another week: IQ of 90.
They found a professor who was interested in their work, and would help them smuggle it to one of his colleagues on the Central Planets for further testing.
And so, the scientist-turned-smuggler stepped through the hacked-open cargo door into the Extraorbital Descent Transport. He took 3 paces forward into the cargo hold. He turned right, walked 12 paces to the O2 masks, and slipped one on. He walked back to the cargo door and pulled the emergency close level. A calm, feminine computer-generated voice repeated the unnerving message three times:
“Por razões de segurança, esta função foi desativada. uma vez aberta, a porta não pode ser novamente fechado.”
“Chū yú ānquán yuányīn, cǐ gōngnéng yǐ bèi jìnyòng. Yīdàn dǎkāi, mén bùnéng chóngxīn mìfēng.”
“For security reasons, this function has been disabled. Once opened, the door cannot be resealed.”
“Coito!” This was not in the plan. The transport would depressurize during the drop. The door was at the back and the gap around the door was small, so heat would not be a problem. But the inspection crew would know someone was there. Even worse, while the O2 mask would keep him breathing, the pressure drop would destroy the rest of his body. The emergency rack did not contain a fully pressurized suit.
“Extraorbital cargo drop in 1 minute.”
He looked about the hold. There were some pressurized cargo crates, but each had a numerical lock. He was done for, but he knew what he had to do. He reached into his pack and felt it. The neural net, the first true artificial intelligence, in its toaster-sized pressurized containment vessel. He secured it in plain sight, where it would survive the descent. The inspection crew would be engineers. The attached report would tell them what the package was, how valuable it was, and that they needed Marcus and Jon. They would take it to their supervisors, who would realize the opportunity, and irregarless of laws and research regulations bring Marcus and Jon to the Central Planets to build more. He would not last inside of 30 seconds, but his work would live on for centuries, would spark a scientific revolution, would change the world in ways unimaginable. It was not a bad reason to die. It would have made his father proud.
“Initiating extraorbital cargo drop in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Release EDT Bravo.”
Airlocks and clasps clicked away. Thrusters rumbled and blazed. The EDT separated. He thought of his father, saw his face smiling down on him through dirt and grease. With a final woosh, the air was gone, all sound was gone, and so was he.
Matthew Vernacchia
Published in Issue 33