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Chief-CWH
Lieutenant (Senior Grade)
Posts: 97
Joined: Sun Aug 04, 2013 1:25 pm
Location: Tx, Al, La, VA, Ak, Md, NC and everywhere in between. Army Brat-Army Officer
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Spoiler from book #2,#3, and #6
A thought on NEAT Technology.
Very old Thread being rehashed
How about Merlin installing NEAT on Crown Princess Alahnah? Merlin has one, Crown Princess Alahnah is certainly young enough, and he has plenty of nanotech available to do it. With no rush and extra material nannies could build the receptors needed without having to scavenge anything. Plus Merlin by now has already injected her with nannies and has her medical records on file. Just like everyone else he cares deeply about. So does the little princess get her NEAT??????
MWW - - SafeHold Book 02
Pei realized what Langhorne had done, she took measures of her own. There was no way for her or any member of her staff in the Alexandria enclave to restore the memories of our past lives which had been taken from us. But, unknown to Langhorne and Bédard, she had secretly retained three NEATs. With them, she was able to reeducate a handful of the original colonists. - - Text Cut - -
"Well, what I've been wondering about is this thing Zherneau called a 'NEAT' in his journal. He said Shan- wei used it to reeducate him after Lang-horne and Bédard had erased all of his earlier memories."
He paused, and Merlin nodded.
"And did 'Nimue' have one of the things—whatever it is—in her 'cave'?" the emperor asked.
"As a matter of fact, she did—I mean, I do," Merlin said.
"Well, I got the impression from his journal that they were capable of teaching someone an enormous amount in a very short time. So I've been wondering if it wouldn't make sense for us to use one of those machines to 'educate' some of the rest of us, just in case anything untoward were to happen to you."
"Actually, I think that would be a splendid idea, especially where you, Maikel, and Rahzhyr are concerned. Unfortunately, we can't."
"Why not?"
"Because 'NEAT' is an acronym, which stands for 'Neural Education and Training,' " Merlin said. All of his Safeholdian listeners looked blank, and he raised his right hand, holding it cupped before him as if to c "What that means is that it directly interfaces—connects with—the hu-man neural system. Your nerves and brain. It's rather like the technology Nimue used to record her personality and her memories when she uploaded them to me."
It felt more than a little peculiar to be having this conversation, Merlin reflected. On the other hand, it probably would have felt equally peculiar to have held it with anyone from Terra. Not least because of the fact that he was so far past the mandated ten-day legal maximum which had been permitted under Federation law for a PICA to operate in autonomous mode.
"The problem is that for a NEAT to interface with a human being, the human being has to have the necessary implants." They looked even blanker, and he sighed. "Think of it as . .. the fitting a water hose screws into aboard one of the water hoys the harbormaster uses to refill a ship's water tanks. It's a very, very tiny ... mechanism, for want of a better word, that has to be surgically implanted into someone before they can connect to a NEAT. Shan-wei was able to reeducate Zherneau and the others because all of the Adams' and 'Eves' had already received their implants. Everyone on Old Earth received them shortly after birth. No one here on Safehold has them, though. So without something to attach the 'hose' to, I can't just pour knowledge into your heads."
"I'm extremely sorry to hear that," Mahklyn said. Merlin glanced at him, and the doctor chuckled a bit harshly. "Reading over the texts you've had copied for me is exciting enough, Merlin. Having the same knowledge 'magically' made available to me would be even more marvelous. And it would save so much time, too."
MWW - - SafeHold Book 03
“Really?” Sharleyan blinked. “How did that happen?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as her lively curiosity was piqued and distracted her from teasing Merlin to get even for that trick with the cliffside.
“Oh.” For a moment, Merlin looked nonplussed. Then he shook himself. “Uh, well, actually,” he said, “I had to give it your full profile. I used one of the remote diagnostic units one night. When you were asleep,” he added.
“When I was asleep?” She gave him the sort of look nannies gave young children who insist they certainly don’t know anything about any missing cookies. No, Ma’am! Not them! “And just why did you do that,Seijin Merlin?” she inquired rather tartly. “Without mentioning it to me, I mean.”
“Well, at the time, the Brethren still hadn’t agreed you could be told about the Journal,” Merlin said. “That meant I couldn’t explain it to you.”
“That meant you couldn’t explain it to me then,” she pointed out implacably. “It doesn’t say a word about why you couldn’t have explained it to me since. Nor does it answer the really important question. That would be the one about why you did it at all.”
Merlin looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head. He’d known this moment was going to come, he reminded himself. And he didn’t really expect her to be too upset with him....
Sure you don’t, he thought dryly. That’s why you’ve been in such a tearing rush to come clean, isn’t it,Seijin Merlin? And why the hell does Owl have to suddenlystart displaying spontaneous autonomous responses right this minute? If he’d just kept his damned mouth shut, like usual....
“All right,” he sighed. “The reason I gave the medicomp your records—and yours, too, Cayleb,” he added to the emperor he knew was listening in from Cherayth, “was so that it could manufacture standard nanotech for both of you.”
“ ‘Nanotech’?” Cayleb repeated over the com, pronouncing the word very carefully, and Merlin nodded.
“Yes. Nanotechnology consists of very, very tiny machines—so tiny you couldn’t see them with the most powerful magnifying glass any Safehold optician could possibly grind. In this case, they’re medical machines, designed to work inside the human body to keep it healthy.”
“There are machines inside us?” Sharleyan knew she sounded a bit shaken by the idea, but that was fair enough. She was shaken. And not just a little bit, if she was going to be honest about it, either.
“Yes. But they’re so tiny no one would ever realize they were there,” Merlin assured her hastily. “And they won’t hurt you—or anyone else—in any way!”
“Should I assume from what you’ve just said that you put these . . . machines inside both of us?” Cayleb asked, and there was a faint but undeniable sternness in the question.
“Yes,” Merlin said again, and squared his shoulders. “You and your father were both going off to war, Cayleb, and I needed you both.” His face hardened and his voice grew harsher, harder. “I lost your father, anyway,” he grated, unable, even now, to fully forgive himself for that, “and I don’t plan on losing you, too. Certainly not to anything I can prevent! So I injected you with the standard Federation nanotech when you were asleep. And I did the same thing to Sharleyan after she arrived in Tellesberg. And”— he shrugged
again—“if this is the time for coming clean, I suppose I should admit I did it for Maikel and Domynyk and . . . a few others, too.”
“But . . . why?” Sharleyan asked.
“Because it will keep you from getting sick.”
“Sick from what?” Cayleb asked.
“From anything,” Merlin said simply.
“What?” Sharleyan blinked at him again. Surely he didn’t mean—
“From anything,” Merlin repeated. “You’ll never have cancer, or pneumonia, or even a cold again. And if you’re injured, it will help you heal more quickly. A lot more quickly, in fact. Actually, that was one reason I hesitated to inject it. If a healer happens to notice how fast one of you recovers from a cut or a broken bone, it could lead to... questions.”
“Wait a minute,” Cayleb said. “Just wait a minute. You mean neither of us will ever be sick again? Not ever?”
“Exactly.” Merlin sighed yet again. “I don’t have the anti- aging drugs to go with it, even if we dared to use them in the first place, but that much, at least, I could do. And you were both too important to what we’re trying to accomplish for me not to do it, too.” He shook his head, and his expression was still hard, like something hammered from old iron. “I can’t keep you or Sharley from being killed in an accident, Cayleb, and we’ve already had proof enough I can’t guarantee you won’t get killed in some stupid battle. But I will be damned if I lose either of you one minute before I have to to something as stupid as a frigging germ!”
MWW - - SafeHold Book 06
“That doesn’t make any sense.” He shook his head. “I didn’t have any neural receptors, either. In fact, now that I think about it, I distinctly remember your telling us it was the lack of receptors which meant we couldn’t use any of the neural education units in your cave to give us all complete educations.”
“That’s right.”
“But if that’s true, then how in God’s name did you … ‘record’ me in the first place?”
“You don’t have—didn’t have—the receptors, Nahrmahn. The NEATs are designed to impart information, not record it. They’re transmitters, and the human doesn’t come brain-equipped with a receiver. That has to be provided if the NEAT’s going to connect. But the human brain does radiate, if a receiver’s sensitive enough to pick up its transmissions, and that’s one of the things—the most important thing, really, under the circumstances—that headset I used is specifically designed to do.”
“But that’s not all it was designed to do, is it?” Nahrmahn watched her expression even more closely than before. “I’ve had personal experience now to disprove that cliché about your entire life passing in front of your eyes, so pardon me if I find it unlikely I was spontaneously ‘radiating’ all those memories for you just then. And I’ve learned enough about your technology to be pretty sure data had to be flowing both ways if you were going to record something as complex as a human personality and its memories.”
“Well, yes,” Nimue admitted. She drew another deep breath. “You were dying, Nahrmahn. We couldn’t stop that. So I overrode the programming on your bio nanotech and I enabled a tertiary function on the headset. I didn’t have it made specifically for you, you know. I actually intended it for me, but when I ordered Owl to run it up on his fabricators in the cave, he simply duplicated a standard piece of hardware Terran EMT—emergency medical technician—units routinely carried with them. You do remember how I used it to block the pain you’d been feeling?”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“Well, that was what it was most often used for, its primary function. Its secondary function was to make recordings just like you and me.” She smiled briefly at his expression. “Of course, it was designed to do that using the NEAT connections all Terrans were equipped with—nothing else would give it enough bandwidth to record something so complex under such adverse conditions—but that’s where the nanotech I’ve injected all of you with comes in.” Her smile vanished. “When I activated the headset, Owl used its tertiary function to reprogram the nannies’ base parameters. He needed my authorization to do it, and he couldn’t’ve done it without the headset’s EMT functions, but, to be honest, if you hadn’t already been dying, Nahrmahn, it almost certainly would’ve killed you anyway.”
“Killed me?” Nahrmahn’s nostrils flared. “You mean our nanotech could kill any of us?”
“Yes.” Nimue met his gaze unflinchingly. “Under the right circumstances. As I said, however, Owl couldn’t do it without the headset’s interface and my personal and direct authorization as the nannies’ originator. It’s not some sort of ‘kill switch,’ Nahrmahn; it’s part of the standard package I used as the basis for all of you. And what it’s normally used for is targeted emergency repair of the nerves controlling your vital functions. It’s an emergency medical intervention technique that bypasses destroyed or severely damaged nerves to keep things like a critically injured person’s heart and lungs working until the medical teams can get him into a trauma center.”
“That … sounds reasonable.”
“It is. Unfortunately, it’s a … brute-force approach. It’s a quick-and-dirty, emergency-only technique to be used only in a last-ditch situation, because it requires pretty close to a complete regen afterwards.”
“‘Regen’?” he repeated the unfamiliar word carefully.
“Regeneration, Nahrmahn. In some cases, a complete body regen, which could take up to a couple of years, even with Federation medical tech. In other cases, a more limited regen, affecting only the specific nervous tissue that was, for want of a better term, scavenged to build the bypass.”
“That sounds … unpleasant,” Nahrmahn observed, and Nimue laughed briefly.
“I did mention that I only tried it because you were dying anyway.”
“True. But what exactly does this have to do with how I ended up here?”
He pointed at the balcony’s flagstones.
“The nannies built the receptors we needed,” Nimue said in a flat tone. “And they found the material to build them by scavenging other parts of your brain. They had to do that anyway for me to block the pain, since you didn’t have the receptors someone on Old Terra would’ve had, but it wasn’t easy and they couldn’t do it without inflicting a lot of additional damage. If by some miracle you hadn’t died after all, Nahrmahn, you’d’ve been a complete paralytic afterwards. That’s why I’d never have used it, despite the horrible pain I knew you were in, if there’d been the least cha nce of your surviving your wounds. But there wasn’t, and I didn’t want to lose you, and that meant Owl and I had to push the nannies even further, because we needed to reach more than just your brain’s pain centers. What we did certainly would’ve killed you in the end, whatever else happened, and, frankly, I didn’t think we’d be able to do it, anyway. Not really—not in the time we had left, and not with how badly the nannies had already burned themselves out keeping you alive until I got there.”
“But obviously they worked after all,” Nahrmahn said.
“Not … entirely,” Nimue replied. He stiffened, looking at her, and she sighed.
“The connection wasn’t perfect, and we didn’t have a lot of time. Under normal circumstances, there’s a very complete data-checking function in the software and it’s designed to do a thorough, methodical information search. There’s a stupendous amount of storage capacity in a human brain, and especially with the jury-rigged receptors we had, there’s only so much bandwidth. When you combine that with how little time we had, Owl had to disable some of the anticorruption protocols built into the software. He estimates we lost at least fifteen percent of your total memories. Probably a little more, to be honest.”
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Commission Officer Vs Warrant Officer
When you Commission someone you hope that they will work.
When you Warrant someone you know that they will work.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ret US Army - Ordnance/Signal
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