Defragmentation

[Aardvark]

"Welcome to the Red Cove Centre for Neurological Replenishment and Research. All of our operators are currently busy, but if you would like to take a seat in our waiting room, one of our attendants will be with you shortly"

 

Cheery, friendly voice, one for each patient. The future of marketing, it would've been. Fortunately, marketing was outlawed under the "Public Nuisance Act" of 2054. A bill that passed with much backing from the religious right, oddly enough. Now it was a messaging service. An individual friendly voice, beamed straight into your brain to tell you in an unnatural and disconcerting way exactly what the sign on the desk is telling you.

 

OUT TO LUNCH

 

The waiting room was your standard medical institute fare. Chairs arranged in clusters around several coffee tables, magazines from the previous century with themes ranging from Interior Decorating to Cars and back to Interior decorating, an old fashioned television playing a medical service piece, which would be violating the public nuisance laws, had they not been clever enough to omit the price, an empty water cooler, a children’s playpen, complete with toys unsuitable for children under three, several plants and a filing cabinet that seemed to go on forever. Not surprising, since the post-World War 3 population boom bumped the global population well past the 10 Billion mark. If it wasn't for the various corporate entities boosting production from their Meat Vats, the population would've eventually levelled out at a manageable number, but there's always money or charitable tax deductions to be had.

 

One of the attendants returned from their lunchbreak. Gender was difficult to determine, as Occupational Health and Safety regulations stipulated that all medical workers must wear concealing biohazard suits. One Mad and/or Evil Scientist releases one little supervirus in the interests of population control and people start panicking. The attendant hit a button on the console, activating The Scanner. Several sensors in various parts of the ceiling release intense bursts of something outside the colour spectrum, which somehow scans people's retinas, fingerprints, digestive tract and DNA sequence. In a place like this, that’s all they need to know. Out of the arms of each occupied seat in the room popped a number. A sign above the reception desk displayed the number currently being served. Fortunately, chair technology had solved the problems of chair-induced skeletal injury, muscular trauma, sterility and peripheral neuropathy. A prolonged waiting room experience was no longer a health hazard. Well, at least the chairs weren't.

 

Every now and then, a patient would get up and proceed through the white door. When the white door was opened, one couldn't help but wonder about the thickness of the door, the soundproof padding or the impenetrable darkness beyond. If one frequents such places, one would know that they're merely there to scare off those totally unsuitable for the procedure. When working with the brain, the last thing a neuro-engineer needs is a panicky subject. Fear is the mindkiller, especially when someone's probing your neurons with a nanoscalpel.

 

The clock was always wrong. Supposedly a preparatory experience, but one has to wonder, how a clock with variable seconds, including negative seconds, helps prepare the brain for complex neural re-engineering. Another question would be how someone could design a weight-driven mechanical clock with variable-length seconds.

 

"Patient Two... Three... Eight... Seven... Your Appointment Is Now. Please Proceed Through The White Door"

 

Every word of that message had a trailing fullstop. They could get a welcoming greeting right, but any other message, including emergency alerts (fire, flood, famine, Bigfoot), was pieced together using individually recorded words. With an eight track hum.

 

The darkness only goes for a few metres. Long enough to prevent anyone in the waiting room from seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. On each side of the corridor, doors led into the various surgeries. Every once in a while, a scream would echo throughout the area, followed by cursing. The good thing about being a practising neural engineer is patients will not remember the procedure. Along with large chunks of their childhood, if any associations formed. But the screams were never from actual pain, unless a paincentre was struck. Which happened rarely. Only twice a day, at the most. The biggest problem was always the accidental release of the patients' Worst Fears. Everybody has one, somewhere. Even if they normally don't fear it, triggering a fear response is frighteningly simple when you're probing peoples' synapses with various energised implements.

 

There is always a single open door at any one time. No exits could ever be found until the procedure had finished. The single open door always lead to an unoccupied surgical chair with a bio-suited doctor standing by. There never was any idle chit chat, no reassuring words, just a simple gesture of direction and a patient gaze through the concealing mask. These people are the kind of people who can least afford empathy. Anyone entering a mind with anything less than engineering precision was likely to break something. Surgical seat with built-in, self-deploying restraints. Head, arms, waist, legs. The slightest movement in this occupation could be costly, as litigation had only gotten worse over the centuries.

 

Smooth metal pads to the temples allowed minor manipulation of the senses. The last thing anyone needs to see is their own brain, but consciousness is essential. With a tiny jolt of electrons, the senses go dark. All five of them. A terribly disconcerting feeling, but a necessary one.

 

---

 

When it ends, the senses return. A patient never sees an exit, for reasons they don't let anyone know. Probably to stop people stealing those nanoscalpels. The bill for such a procedure was always terribly high, but they did their jobs well. With a few pokes, prods and zaps, the mind is fresh, ready to let those creative brainjuices flow once more.

[Appy]

Scary thought.. let's hope it's not visionary.

 

Thanks for yet another good read Aardvark