12.07.2015
Tern took a couple forkfulls of eggs and chewed them, while Christy ate more of her burrito. Sunlight glinted off cars passing outside and threw a moving patchwork of light onto Christy’s hair, which she had tied back into a loose ponytail. Other fragments of light scuttled across the ceiling and disappeared suddenly.
“Have you,” Tern began, “ever heard of Extra Subconscious Leasing?”
“A little, but not too much detail. Most of that tech stuff makes my eyes glaze over. Can you explain itso that I don’t fall asleep?”
Tern brought the coffee to his lips, blew he steam away for a few seconds as he gathered his thoughts, and he finally took a few deep drinks.
“Five or ten years ago, scientists showed a way to piggy back onto the brain’s subconscious processing, using mice, to calculate pi out to something like a million digits. Kind of a snooze, I know. A researcher who used thousands of these mice a year had the idea to perform the procedure on each mouse, and then he leased out that brainpower to anyone willing to pay for it. The idea was a bit of a novelty, but a few people took it seriously. A group of coders popped up who were really good at writing the programs that got put into the brains.”
Judy came by with a fresh, full pot of coffee and topped off both their mugs.
“Thanks,” Christy said, and Tern nodded in agreement.
“That group formed a company called Smokestack (don’t ask me where the name comes from), and hired that original researcher as a consultant. They ended up with a few thousand mice that they leased the spare subconscious from. Financial institutions were big into it, because of security and the unhackability of these ‘programs’ that ran on the mice brains. Smokestack got so popular that they then stepped their way up to cats’ and dogs’ brains, to get some extra power.
“That’s when they noticed that after 3-6 months of having these programs run on the brains, that the animals had lost 10-20% of their body fat. That’s when the tabloids took notice. They called for human trials because this seemed like the ultimate weight loss program. That’s when the…”
A siren erupted out the window and raced down the street. The lights speeding throughout the entire diner as one, then two, then three cop cars surged down the road. Tern continued when the sirens had faded in their doppler shifted wailing.
“That’s when that researcher… something McAndrews, I think… when she started a fundraiser to try it out on herself. She ended up raising five million dollars in something like two days. A couple weeks later, she was on a talk show while they tuned into a real-time simulation of an avalanche started at the top of the Swiss Alps. The amount of detail was impressive, as was the fact she held a normal conversation at the same time. Sure enough, a few months later, she’d lost 10% of her fat, and not even changed her diet.”
Christy said, “So I’m sure those fitness nuts really lost it then.”
“Oh, yeah. The FDA didn’t approve the human trials, but a couple months after McAndrews’ interview, there were at least ten or so people who’d traveled to Russia and China to have the procedure done to them. The kicker is that they could rent out the brainpower for something like a grand an hour.”
“Holy shit, are you serious?”
“Right? And the money is what caught my attention. But I didn’t feel like doing anything risky, and I couldn’t afford the trip overseas anyway. So I waited in the hopes that it’d be available stateside in not too long”
Tern took a few more sips of his coffee. “Once the BEI got wind of it, they proclaimed this to be the biggest economic potential since the assembly line. They rushed some laws into place, saying that trillions of dollars in GDP were at stake. They even funded a few million of the procedures by lottery.”
“Did you?” Christy asked.
“Yup, I was one of the lucky bastards. So they flew me out to Seattle, where they had a clinic for all this, and I had the surgery after a week of courses that taught me what to expect. Everything went well and they only kept me there for a few weeks of observation. After that, they sent me back here to Denver with the hopes of easy riches and a smaller waistline/pant size.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“About a month and a half, I guess.”
“And how’s it been?”
“Good, I guess. Had some decent money in the first month. But the jump in people leasing out their subconscious caused the price per hour to tumble. I think now it’s something like one hundred fifty an hour. Which is awesome, but it’s only like three to four hours of jobs per couple days right now.”
“Hmm, so not full-time like they’d thought it would be?”
“Not yet, but I guess it also takes time to write the code that runs on the brain. Smokestack’s value has gone through the ceiling. Billions and billions.”
“Damn,” Christy said.
“And they are ramping up to write more and more of it.”
“That kind of stuff blows my mind,” Christy said.
“Mine too,” Tern replied. “And it’s running up there right now.”
He pointed at his head and tapped a few times on the temple with his right hand’s middle finger.
“Do you feel any different?” Christy asked.
“Not really. Maybe a bit hungrier than normal, but they say that’s normal. The brain uses something like 100% more calories this way.”
“Wow,” Christy said. “And what’s it like when no jobs are running?”
“Well, I’ve always been into space. Have you ever heard of SETI?”
“They look for aliens, right?”
“More or less. Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. For a long time, they’ve had software you could run to analyze signals from space to see if they looked like they were from intelligent life. I’d done that back when I actually owned any computers. Anyway, I heard they came up with a program that will run on the brain. So I’ve been letting that run while there’s nothing else going on.”
“And they pay you for that?”
“No, that’s free. But it seems cool to say I’m searching for aliens as we speak.” Tern gave a small laugh which Christy smiled to.
“Quite impressive!”