Schrijven: Enuram
Thursday 2 April 2020
1
Medical specialist Lejacho was annoyed. Several of his remote colleagues had already suggested euthanasia as the preferred solution for his patient. Admittedly, the medical problem at hand was severe. The brain scans of the patient had shocked all present in the operating room. “Whole sections are missing!” had called out attendant Eizig. The others present made muffled noises, or simply rolled their eyes. But euthanasia was destructive. The patient (who’s identity was at present unknown) might have relatives, or serve some function or other. Perhaps more importantly, it would leave Lejacho with nothing much to do. It would hardly earn him credit. Luckily, not all the remotes seemed in agreement. Lejacho pinged his remote college Azhounwe, and asked him: “Az, let me have your thoughts.”
“Certainly. The earlier tests showed not that much actual impairment. The motor functions of the patient are fine. He can talk, he comprehends. He has a sense of self—albeit not well-defined. The damage is really selective: erased memories!”
Lejacho agreed in silence. It was too specific. He said: “Are you suggesting that the patient might be the victim of a crime?” Again muffled noises. A crime! That would be something else entirely. Azhounwe raised his voice again, sitting in his living room, watching the feed of the operating room some thousand kilometers away.
“There is nothing in the databases that would indicate a natural cause. We need a detective. Find out who this man is, and seek out and punish the evil doer!”
At this point one of the other remotes interrupted. His name was Iarich. He conceded: “Perhaps a crime was committed. No real proof for that, mere conjecture. But yes, it would be prudent to call a detective. The patient however, not does not merely lack a few memories. According to the intake tests, he keeps forgetting what is happening. Just try and ask him!”
In the room a silence fell, as all physically present turned to the man in the chair. He sat stiffly upright, his arms tightly on the supports of the chair. He looked down. His dark hair was a mess. That might not be a fashion statement. The patient was found with nothing on him that showed who he was. With the possibility of a crime being raised, the hypothetical attacker might have cut the patient’s hair to further prevent his identification.
Attendant Enlea, a somewhat elderly women with a bold head, addressed the patient.
“Sir. Sir! Look at me.”
The man raised his head. He looked mildly puzzled.
“Sir. Do you remember how you got here?”
The man’s eyes lighted up a bit, but he didn’t respond. Enlea lowered her head to meet the man’s eyes. “Tell me, do you remember entering this room?” Enlea gestured around. The man turned his head sideways a bit, and returned to Enlea. His face turned sad. “No,” he managed. “No I—I know nothing.” He stiffened his body even more.
Lejacho ignored Enlea’s interaction with the patient. He had noticed this aspect of the patient’s memory problems as well, but he had dismissed it. Similar memory problems often showed recovery in time. The brain scans on the other hand, revealed unexpected physical damage. Lejacho allowed himself to feel somewhat excited about the puzzle that the patient’s condition presented.
“The scans are inconclusive,” he blurted out. “We need to know exactly how much of his brain is really beyond repair. If necessary, we lift his skull and take it from there.”
The audience present in the room showed mixed responses. Most were relieved that he had a plan. Interestingly, all of remotes that a moment ago had been ready to give up, changed their stances to neutral. Lejacho was still in the game.
2
The man, no longer nameless, had come to resent the apartment he lived in. The view was nice enough. The apartment was elevated high above the ground, and had an unrestricted view over the savanna right up to a blue mountain range at the horizon. The apartment was part of a row of habitations build on top of an interchange, itself raised on top of high supports. Nice view. And the appartment was comfortably cool. But being there was dreadful. The endless treatments. Recuperating from their impact. Not that he remembered all of it. From the first few months remained nothing. He only knew of them because they’d advised him to keep a diary. The dairy was dreadful as well. Repetitive. A testament of utter confusion. Every time he’d wake up, from sleep, or from simply being unaware that time had gone by, the robot had to patiently tell him where he was, that he was a patient at the local hospital. That he had trouble remembering things. He turned his head a bit in the direction of the robot. It stood in the furthest corner, currently impassive. It was bipedal humanoid shaped, but its outward design was deliberately nonhuman. No face. Mechanical limbs. Only its chest was not bare. It was covered with blue textile, shaped like a uniform. On the back of its chest letters wrote: DISTRICT HOSPITAL. On the front, on the left part in much smaller letters: District Hospital Assistant. And below that its name: Vekoi. Yes. It had a name. And it responded to it, like a dog.
The man had a name now as well. He dared not say it. The name scared him. It was unfamiliar to him, obviously. For now, it only reminded him of his damaged brain. Deliberately damaged brain, apparently. And the endless attempts to repair his brain. Somehow regrow this or that part. Alternatively, clone that, and put it in. Support those other parts. Put in an amplifier. An amplifier! He touched his head. No longer shaven bold, now that finally no new operations were scheduled. Beneath the short hair an abundance of scars and ridges on his skull.
He learned his name less than ten days ago. Months of research had gone into establishing his identity. His memories were gone of course. How about DNA? No match. Perhaps his speech patterns can be localized? No, not really. The pigmentation of his skin in relation to his genetic make-up. Perhaps this or that latitude? How about the cloths he had been wearing? Disposable coveralls, freely available all over the world. But wait, what model from which factory? Combine that with the hovertrain line that he was found on, were does that lead? Any surveillance data for stations on that line? And so on. It was amazing that in the end, they had success.
So why had they not simply matched his face to a missing persons report? Because he was not missing. He was dead.
Slowly the detective had put it to him: Uefu Tailui.
“That’s it? That’s my name?”
“Don’t you recognize it? Do you feel any response at all?”
“It sounds strange. It doesn’t sound like a real name.”
The man who now was called Uefu Tailui made a face. He went on with: “This is horrible. And I’m officially dead? Why is that not a mistake?”
“There was a suicide note. When his body was not found, he was declared dead.”
“So the suicide note was fake.”
“Actually, we don’t think so.”
“You don’t?”
“No. We compared the handwriting to the notes you made in your diary. The handwriting is the same. You wrote it.”
“That is also horrible! But wait, the whole premise was that someone hurt me. Did I hurt myself?”
“And cut your own hair? Dressed in anonymous clothes? And more importantly, just let someone put you on the hovertrain? We found footage, remember? No, we think someone forced you to write the note. A crime was committed. We are certain.”
The detective looked closely into Uefu’s disbelieving face, when he emphasized these last words. He continued with: “To be very clear, we like to expose whoever did this to you, and bring him—or her—to justice. How do you feel about this yourself?”
The detective had good reason to ask Uefu this. More than once Uefu had expressed a desire to put the whole accident behind him, and just start a new life. Uefu took in the interrogating stare of the detective, and sat back in his chair. He looked up to the ceiling and raised his arms in a wordless I don’t know. The detective went on.
“I can understand that you have mixed feelings about being involved. But surely, you want justice to be done? Do you want the person or persons responsible to go unpunished? Somehow someone profited from your disappearance. Do you want that someone to be happy he got away with it?”
“No, no. I get it. I agree. Lock him up. Or her. Or them. Whatever. I just—” Again a gesture of not knowing, or despair. However, the detective had expected Uefu’s reluctance to commit himself, and took another approach.
“Starting a new life, just like that. That might not be a trifling matter. I have to ask, considering your memory loss. You do know that you’ll have much more opportunities to do what you’d like if you were awarded credit? You know what credit is? And how it is granted?”
“Well, yes. At least how it is awarded in this region. It differs, depending on the region, doesn’t it? Here, if you contribute to society in some way, some remarkable way, you’re awarded credit.”
“Yes. And we want to bring one or more criminals to justice. We feel strongly about that. If you help us, we would consider that a benefit to society. You’d be able to get credit, just by helping us finding out who harmed you.”
The man called Uefu Tailui made another face. A mixture of disgust, amazement, despair. And a smidgen of curiosity.
“How much credit?”
3
The hovertrain that Uefu Tailui had boarded was of a common type that was completely self-powered. Apparently this put a limit on the top speed of the train, and the time it could continue in the dark. As a result of these limitations long distance travel involved one or more overnight stays. Normal citizens were not expected to be in such a hurry that this was considered unreasonable. Uefu had already endured one break, from late in the evening to early morning. He thought little of the accommodations near the railway track. They felt sterile and were completely automated. Also, he knew the rooms to be monitored. Not by humans of course, but erratic behavior would certainly trigger an alarm.
Uefu had to go a considerable distance. The investigation had been unable to verify how he had been transported all the way. They only had footage of him for the last part of his original journey. Uefu had seen the images. How an unidentified person with a hat and large glasses had led him on the train and put him in a seat. And how he passively remained in the seat for the entire trip. The images disgusted Uefu and he tried not to think about them. Now on the journey back, he tried to keep busy. He read ferociously about he area were he supposedly had lived his entire life up until now. Everything was still completely alien to him, and disconcerting. Instead of going home, he felt as if he was being exiled. As bad as the treatments in the hospital had been, al least the city had become familiar. Now he was headed to the unknown, and the tension made him feel miserable.
Occasionally Uefu would leave his study materials alone. Then he would take a short nap, or stare out of the window of the train. The track of the train was almost everywhere elevated on huge paired outwardly curved pillars. When the track carved its way through a maintain range the track would be ground level, if you could call it that on the side or inside a mountain. However, the past day there had been no mountains. Mostly very flat and dry plains. Once in a while Uefu would spot agricultural or forestation projects, sudden green blots among brown, beige and grey.
When Uefu took in de passing landscapes, he puzzled about their unfamiliarity. Seeing a city pass by, or a large agricultural project, he would reluctantly try to access what the detective, apparently in all seriousness, had called his “secret weapon”. In one of the surgical procedures that the doctors had come up with to fix his damaged brain, they had implanted some kind of device. Initially he understood from what he was told that the function of the device was to amplify electrical signals. However, the detective told Uefu that this was only one of its functions, and in fact simply boosting electrical signals was phased out as his brain recovered. Uefu was shocked to learn of its other functions. One was to help strengthening new memories that he made. How this was possible was beyond Uefu’s comprehension, but it seemed to involve helping building connections between the new memory and any associations he might have at the moment he was thinking about it. Since this was not without risk the device had an interface that allowed him to lessen the effect, or even shut it down. The interface had multiple redundant access ways and securities. However, its main access was almost beyond belief. The device was always listening, which allowed him to simply whisper his commands. It recognized and responded only to his own voice. Clearly, the device was operated by an advanced microcomputer. It also was a source of information. He could simply ask it questions like: what is the name of the city to my right?
Experimenting with his supposedly enhanced ablility to remember new information, Uefu would ask the device lots of names of places and things that he saw from his window, and would try to remember it hours later. Visual cues worked quite well. He’d visualize the image of one of the cities or objects in the landscape that he’d asked about, and the information would pop into his brain immediately. The detective had suggested that with some training, he could turn himself into a memory miracle. Which would be highly ironic, given the massive memory loss that he had suffered.
The second time that Uefu stayed overnight he was unable to sleep. He already felt regret that he had agreed to go back to the home that he didn’t remember. He tried to imagine what he would say, and to whom, but he had too little to go on. Exasperated he asked out loud: “How on earth can I do this, I’ve got no idea!” He startled when he heard the voice of the device in his head respond.
“Please be more specific,” it said succinctly. When Uefu calmed down from his initial shock, he complained.
“You’re really listening the whole time aren’t you.”
“If you want, you can disable my voice interface. However, you may find the other access ways less convenient.”
“I would, wouldn’t I.” Uefu tried to remember what else the detective had said about the device. But while he remembered the detective’s soft voice, the words didn’t come. At a loss, he asked the device instead.
“How exactly are you supposed to help me find my attackers?”
“Anyway you want me to. Shall I make suggestion?”
“Sure, go right ahead.”
“One strategy is to conceal the extend of your memory loss. I have extensive biographical data of the people that you have interacted with in your past. When I have access to a camera, I can identify the people you meet, and give you their names and background information.”
Uefu was startled again. If only because the talking with the device felt so very natural. How powerful was this device actually? Wait—
“You’re not a sentient AI, aren’t you.”
“Of course I am. This information was provided to you already.”
“It seems I wasn’t paying attention all that well.”
“Attention is required to build long term memories. Also, you have to think about and associate what you want to remember to make the necessary connections.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know that. How about you requiring cameras to be able to see. Can’t you just use my eyes?”
“No.”
“How did you know about all the places I was asking then—o wait I suppose you’re equipped with a way to know where we are?”
“Yes. More than one way actually. I can access satellite navigation aids. But I also keep track of our position by calculating our movements, identifying landmarks, listening in to open data networks...”
“Can you access the security cameras here?”
“No. Not yet anyway.”
“How do you mean, not yet?”
“The local network is encrypted, but not very secure. I might be able to force access. When you arrive at Enuram and introduce yourself to the local police, you might be able to apply for access codes of certain surveillance networks to aid the investigation. With regard to a camera that I could use now, I can use the camera of your handheld, if you hold it up. It would be even more practical if you would use one of the pin cameras that detective Jodai gave you.”
Uefu raised his arms, lying on his back on the bed in the semi-darkness of the room. “Pin cameras,” he sighed. “What pin cameras?”
“The detective gave you a full tool set to aid the investigation. It should be in your travel bag. Pin cameras are among the tools.”
For a while Uefu stared stunned at the ceiling of the room. Then he slid from under the covers of the bed and went to retreive his bag. He turned on the main light and went through the bag. He recognized the small case that the detective had given him. He opened it and found it packed with smal items and packaged things, none of which looked familiar.
“What is it that I’m looking for?”
“A pouch containing buttons, pins, perhaps jewelry...”
Uefu found it en browsed through the differently shaped mini cameras. None of them seemed to look particularly stealthy. Except...
“How about the earpiece. Can I use that?”
“That would be an excellent choice. It actually contains two cameras, one front and one back. It is also a functional device, you can pair it with your handheld. It will provide an excuse to talk to me, people will assume that you are using your handheld. Finally, someone scanning for a network, will discard it as simply a wireless earpiece. ”
“Right, right.” Uefu kept the earpiece and put everything else back in place.
“Can you use it already?”
“No, pairing it with your handheld will activate it.”
Uefu turned around, went for his jacket and took his handheld from it. He had no trouble pairing the earpiece with the handheld, which confused him. How was it possible that he knew how to do that, but remembered nothing about himself? He put the earpiece in his right ear.
“How about now?”
“As soon as you paired it I was able to access it. Well done.”
Uefu was silent after that. Well done, he thought by himself. He was being coached by an artificial being in his head. It bewildered him, but at the same time he felt less alone. He put the handheld and the earpiece on the table en slid back in bed, turned around, and fell asleep.