The following is a follow up to the chapters 8 and 11, “The Accountant” and “The Accountant and The God of Time” … Like most of these chapters, they’re quasi-stand alone, but you’ll get slightly more context by reading those two first.
Chapter 13 - Wetware - Louis John & Abe Cussler
“What are you doing with your fingers?” Louis John asked as he sat, idly spinning the office chair back and fourth.
“Beethoven. It helps me think. Um, okay. So. Uh… before I arrested you, you said something about mushrooms and baby brains. What were you going to say?”
“So I am arrested?”
“Yes. I think so. Yeah.”
“And you’re an FBI agent?“
“Yes. Why were you talking about mushroom brains?”
“No, baby brains or mushroom computers. It’s one or the other.”
“What is?”
“The future.”
“Is it possible for you to explain it all without me teasing every detail out of you?” Asked Agent Cussler. He was getting flustered. No, he was currently flustered and getting more so. This man was sitting in his chair, he didn’t know where his pens were, and He had no idea what was going on in this conversation.
“Yeah. Sure. Do I get a phone call? I don’t know who I’d call though. Yesterday, I probably would’ve called you because yesterday I didn’t know you were a fed…”
“Mr. John, you’ve seen the future. Somehow you can control slipping and retain your future memories. Please tell me what you were going to tell me.”
“Oh yeah. My big score. I don’t think I can keep slipping because it hurts more each time and I’m starting to think it’s doing damage or something. So, uh, I was thinking of one big investment and then I’d get out of the game. But when I slip more than ten years into the future there are two futures: baby brains and mushrooms. Sometimes it’s one and other times it’s the other.”
Agent Cussler gestured in what he hoped was an encouraging “go on” or “continue” gesture, but just looked like he was working a kink out of his wrist.
Louis continued anyway, “So I don’t know which one to put my money in. From what I gather, knowing the future changes the future, right? That’s why the scientists are curing all these diseases really fast and whatnot. I mean, if they loop hack their research and cure some disease that was supposed to kill some guy in the future, then the future’s different. Like that guy doesn’t die now and keeps living and keeps doing stuff. Any stuff he does would change things. Any stuff anyone does that would’ve died if the scientists hadn’t loop hacked changes stuff…” Luis trailed off, having slightly confused himself. He was getting a headache.
“Yes Mr. John, slipping into the future and telling people what you know changes the future. What does that have to do with mushrooms?”
“Oh yeah! So, in the future we either end up with a system of networked living computers in a kind of fungus slurry or a system of networked organoids in a nutrient rich solution er something. I don’t really understand it, I memorized some of that, but I’m a little fuzzy on the details.”
“Organoids?”
“Yeah. That’s what they call the baby brains. There’s a big debate on whether they’re alive or ethical or whatever. Organoids are like clusters of human brain cells that we use as super computer processors. I prefer the mushroom computer future because they don’t have the breeding and harvesting factories in that future. I don’t know, it just seems weird. The fungal sacks are weird too, but more because they smell a little and they’re wet and less because they’re made from little kids. I mean, they claim that they’re not taking parts of their brains that they’d need, but I don’t really trust ‘em. You know? Most of the donor kids grow up to be day laborers… that can’t be a coincidence, right?”
Louis John was speaking so casually about such ground breakingly horrific things that Agent Cussler needed to sit down… but Louis was in his chair.
“Mr. John, may I have my chair?” He was frustrated with himself for asking permission to sit in his own chair, but nothing that was happening today made any sense. Abe Cussler was used to the casual disrespect from his coworkers, but usually civilians respected him as an FBI agent. Louis John was just… not.
“Yeah, no prob Bob,” Louis said as he got up.
“Okay, so,” he stopped the chair from spinning, sat down, and ran his hands over his pants to straighten out the wrinkles, “mushroom computing seems less horrific…”
“Yeah,” Louise continued, “And it’s kinda cool too. There are these trays of wet algae that run along side all the roads and these little kiosks near train stations where people replenish their personal networks… uh, everyone has a little mesh sack of this swampy stuff we wear on the backs of our necks. They melted a bunch of people’s brains at first, but not anymore…”
“What?!”
“Oh yeah, that space ship guy came up with an interface and it overloaded people… Wait, I downloaded a documentary, let me see if I can remember,” at that Louis sat up straight, held his pinky finger out and started speaking in a British accent, “These mesh sacs contain a mix of algae and fungi suspended in a nutrient dense solution. The standard pack contains 512 exabytes of data while some of the more advanced wetsacs can hold 3.5 yottabytes, but everything bottlenecks at the at the human brain. The human brain just hasn’t evolved to process that much data. Early on in the beta testing of the system, thousands of people died as their brains heated up and started to liquify. But those dark days are behind us. The solution, of course, was the transfer station. In all developed countries now, infants are implanted with a small bio-processor that acts as a transfer station for their personal fungal-info colony. This transfer station sorts all the data and passes on the relevant information from the wetsacs to the brain. This avoids overload and liquefaction…” he smiled, rather pleased with himself.
“You memorized all of that?”
“I’m really good at movie quotes.”
“Who’s the space ship guy?”
“The dude who built that ship that went and solved the time crisis… oh wait, no one knows about that yet. And it only happens in the mushroom future, not the organoid one with the baby brains. Actually, that’s another reason I like the mushroom future better, in the other one the world kind of ends. Or not ends, but, like, society kind of falls apart and stuff. So, I’m thinking if I go find the dudes doing the mushroom thing and give them a bunch of money, I’ll stay rich and girls will still want to live with me and maybe we can avoid the New York tribes enslaving Northern Florida and stuff.”
Abe Cussler took a deep breath. Conversing with an idiot was exhausting. This man had the key to saving all of humanity and was hung up on having enough money to continue to hang out with models and actresses. He pinched bridges of his nose.
There was nothing in any of the procedure manuals that told him what he was supposed to do in this situation. Agent Abe Cussler was a forensic accountant. He loved reading history, biographies, and textbooks. Factual things. Organized things.
He hated fiction and specifically hated science fiction. Sci-fi pretended to be factual and organized, but was really just fantasy with a scientific coat of paint. Wizards and Magic became Scientists and technobabble. Swords became lasers and facts became things to be ignored to further the story. It was stupid.
Everything Louis John was saying smacked of sci-fi, but Abe knew things were not quite right. Slipping didn’t make logical sense and he had a nagging feeling that time hadn’t always been this convoluted. Something was wrong. And, this was the first piece of evidence that actually explained how an idiot like Louis John could work the financial system so well without any insider information or market manipulation.
It was sci-fi in real life. He hated everything about it and to make matters worse, he had no idea where his three pens were. This was chaos.
“Alright,” Cussler said as he quickly stood, “We’re going to the stationery store and then we’re going to visit an old professor of mine.”
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