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The machine’s hardware struck her as oddly sculptural, almost ceremonial in appearance: a polished black marble or granite block centered on a dark hardwood pedestal. The stone block had a bowl-shaped depression in the top, reminding Susan of a baptismal font.
“That radiator dish produces a weak antigravity field when Cynthia’s awake,” Abby explained. “Throw something in there and it’ll float. That’s how we know she’s paying attention.”
Susan hesitated for a moment, then tossed her keys into the depression. They clattered loudly at the bottom of the bowl.
“Oops, no floaties,” Abby pouted. “Don’t take it personally, sometimes it takes her a while to warm up to people.” Susan reflected that she hadn’t felt slighted in any way until Abby had brought it up. “Anyway, here’s her actual brain.” Abby waved her hand and a cloudy grey translucent orb appeared in the air before them, a ghostly image of a faux human brain suspended within. A storm of electrical activity crackled through the brain and between its two hemispheres, a visualization of Cynthia’s cognitive process.
“She’s bicameral, of course,” Abby noted, which meant little to Susan. “Anyway, this is where we feed her all our stupid ideas and see what she thinks. We need to reduce both the physical mass and the total information density of the population, so our latest stupid idea is to strip all the redundant coding from their genes and place it an offline server. Of course, then all the individual organisms would need integral wifi signal relays so they’re in constant real-time communication with the virtual gene bank, or they would just turn to mush.”
Susan watched the lightning flash and considered what would happen if the wifi signal was interrupted or the animals wandered out of service range.
“Oh, look!” Abby exclaimed brightly. “Your keys are floating! I guess we’re all friends now.”
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Very intriguing.