Robofootball: Doublespin

Only 3 months away to the first game and Reynolds’ potential star quarterback was still locked in a big MRI-like chamber of a derivative machine that resembled more like that of an old fashioned iron lung with double domed covers, one for the head including the brain and one for the rest of Jess’s body; the two were at least still connected as far as Reynolds coul tell.

“What’s the scoop Doc?”

“Scoop?” Hobson frowned. He wasn’t thinking about ice cream, but more of a small vessel with grayish jell-like brain matter.

“The word?”

“Word? What particular word are you referring to?”

“Jesus,” said Reynolds, “Progress I mean.” Of all the brilliant people he had to work with of late, Hobson was the worst, but a necessary evil within his master plan. Not many things creeped Reynolds out, but there was just something a little off about the small premature balding wiry little man before him. Why couldn’t he be more pleasant, like say Yuri over at the MIR? Of course, Yuri was the polar opposite of Hobson, maybe too nice of a guy. Why couldn’t Hobson be more professional like Doc Holliday at Kettering? Holliday may have been a little arrogant too, but he was more personal and had loads of patience, probably from dealing with students for over 3 decades. Teaching had a way of doing that. But not Hobson, he had nothing in the way of personality, patience, and good-naturedness.

“Our patient is on schedule, in fact, I believe we have now completed the full electro-mapping of the cortical homunculus; thus, allowing us full functional control of the primary motor cortex and the primary somatosensory cortex as well.”

“Jesus,” Reynolds said again frustratedly. Why did his head start to ache whenever he began a conversation with Hobson?

“There are 2 basic types of homunculus,” Hobson went on, not really caring if Reynolds understood or not, “Sensory and Motor. The somesthetic or sensory relays signals from the thalamus while the actual motor function originates from the frontal lobes. Both in simple terms are transmitted to the brain stem, spinal cord, and to the rest of the body through nerves. Fortunately, young Mr. Robinson’s stem and spinal cord were damaged little, certainly not to the point of paralyzation.”

“Go on,” said Reynolds who was lost when Hobson first said ‘homunculus’.

Hobson paused, he could go on for an hour, but to get rid of Reynolds, he tried his best to simplify things to the Neanderthal before him, “There are 4 main parts to the motor cortex, a primary that we refer to as M1 that generates nerve impulses to control movement. With young Mr. Robinson. We have implanted thousands of nanosensors, or more accurately, grafted them to his existing nerves so that we can control them electronically.”

“I thought that you were at the pickle level or something.” Reynolds tried to recall let alone follow along.

“You mean pico, no, sensor-wise, we don’t have technology for that level of precision just yet, but the nanosensors do appear to be working just fine.”

“Okay.”

“I mentioned there are 4 parts to the motor cortex. The M1 is the primary, the other 3 are part of the secondary system. One is the posterior parietal which transforms visual information into motor commands.”

“You mean eyes or what he sees?”

“Yes, we’ll have camera-like external implants that coincide with young Mr. Robinson’s optic nerves so that he can transmit what he sees to his monitor.”

“Okay, I think I get that,” said Reynolds, “What’s next?”

“Not to sound redundant, but second within the secondary system is the pre-motor area or cortex, which is responsible for muscle movement, the PMA.”

“Ah,” said Reynolds, “To move his arms and legs right?”

“Among the 800 or so muscles in the human body give or take a few.” Hobson was showing a little annoyance and had all the patience of a young kid waiting for Santa Claus or the end of a long road trip.

“Hmm, will he be, you know, strong enough to throw?”

“Here, let me show you, come closer.” Hobson led him to the big machine that Jess lay within. There were tubes and what looked like over 100 wires and sensors hooked up to the body. Hobson sat down at a computer terminal that was in turn meshed with the da Vinci 2000, a machine that was larger than an automotive diagnostic machine that was adjacent to Jess’s brain chamber. A schematic of Jess’s brain came up. With a few clicks of the mouse, Hobson zoomed in on the frontal lobe, clicked a few more times on some sensor icons, and Voila! Jess’s left arm followed by his right moved up and down.

“Wow!” Was all Reynolds said, but he was getting that unsettling hair-raised-on-the-back-of-his-neck feeling watching the puppet master pull the strings via computer control.

“To answer your question, take a close look at his biceps.”

Reynolds did so, “Kid’s got some serious muscle.” Reynolds could see the bulk along with the veins popping out.

“We’re able to exercise him daily as much as we wish, with weight resistance too. Part of his intravenous fluids contains a good deal of protein with a small amount of steroids to fight off infection.”

“Steroids? Won’t that….,” Reynolds stopped and realized how stupid he as being. Robots would not have to undergo steroid or blood tests. “Okay doc, I think I get it, didn’t you say there was a 4th or 3rd secondary or…,” Reynolds was confused again.

“Right,” was all Hobson said, “The 3rd component in the secondary motor cortex is the SMA.”

“SMA?”

“Supplementary Motor Area,” Hobson’s patience was running thin as if he expected everyone to be familiar with this type of technical jargon. “It’s responsible for the coordination of complex movements like running, maneuverability, 2-hand functions, and so forth. I do not mean to trivialize as the brain does tend to work in one coordinated unit. The cerebellum and sub cortical motor nuclei are also vital to motor function. One of our biggest challenges is to not only map them all, but to graft sensors and then apply the proper electrical current to coordinate more complicated movements while triggering synapses that innervate different muscles.”

“Jesus,” Reynolds said again as his developing headache ever since he walked through the doors was now exploding into the realms of a severe migraine. “We are on schedule, right?”

“I believe so. It should help that young Mr. Robinson was a quarterback, at least in how should I say it? A past life perhaps?” Hobson almost grinned.

“What do you mean?”

“That throwing a football is already inherent to his genetic make-up. The motor homunculus develops over time like most brain signal-to-body functions, but widely differs from one person to the next. The hand and arm movement coordinated by the brain of an infant slowly develops into such things as baseball pitchers, concert pianists, guitar players, machinists, and so forth. Differences are often due to the functional organization within the map of the brain.”

“Hmm,” Reynolds thought allowed trying his best to stop the pounding in his own brain, but thinking that his instincts had been right about the boy, “You think he’ll be able to throw a football then?”

“That is what I was alluding too, but how well I can control him to do that, only time will tell.”

“All right then,” Reynolds had one overriding thought, and that was to get back to the big Cadillac Escalade with the bottle of Excedrin in the glove compartment along with a bottle of water in the rear door pocket where he usually sat. “One last thing Doc,” Reynolds recalled which was the main reason for his visit.

“Yes?”

“I’ll need those body dimensions for the kid’s armor.”

“I’ll assume that you want the projected goal in that regard?”

“Jesus,” Reynolds said for the umpteenth time, nothing was ever easy with Hobson, “Yeah, sure, whatever he comes out of that thing looking like.”

“His arms and biceps are about where we want them, maybe another 9 or 10 millimeters at most. We’ll need to work in his legs some, can I get back to you in a day or two with the projections?”

“Sure, just email them to Yuri over at the MIR.”

“Yes, I will do that.”

“Oh yeah, you do need to keep him at around 100 kilograms.” 100 was an easy number for Reynolds to remember and he now knew that it represented 220 pounds. With body armor that may weigh as much as 80 pounds each for both Jess and Antwan, Reynolds was at least going to stay within the 300 pound weight threshold just in case they got caught in a weigh in.

“Do I get a standard error factor?”

“Huh?”

“It’s usually the standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size; then again, 100 kilos should already provide us with enough leeway.”

“Jesus,” said Reynolds. “Sure, maybe a pound or two more won’t matter that much.”

“All right then.”

“Good, see ya Doc.”

“Good bye Reynolds.”

Reynolds about rushed out the door to his drugs, Hobson was relieved as well. It was bad enough he had to coach his staff of graduate-degreed professional researchers who were far below his intellect, but a stone-age Neanderthal like Reynolds was akin to changing diapers and communicating with chimpanzees or border collies. To survive, Hobson had to just keep telling himself that this was indubitably a great situation, an excellent opportunity in his ultimate quest for immortality.

In the future, to prolong existence, it was no secret that humans would have to rely more on the mechanical, and once again, the brain was the key for memory and function. The brain had to control everything, but how to preserve it or keep it running indefinitely? That was the rub. It wasn’t too far off to speculate that the mid-to-later 21st century could be the time of the first true cyborg, the melding of man and machine into one happy medium.

Young Mr. Robinson gave him an opportunity to make a step in the right direction. The boy was still a biological creature with a computer controlled brain but still a stepping stone nonetheless. Transcendentally, Hobson would need to find a way to replace those biological components and meld it into an artificial being, but the brain was still the most perplexing, and there were only 2 logical routes he felt that he could take. One was to feed it like young Mr. Robinson’s and enhance it electronically, and he was proving that that could be done with the help of this fool Reynolds with his money and silly football team. The other and more ultimate goal would be a complete transfer of human memory into a computer bank and that would take a lot more time, effort, and funding if at all possible.

For now, Reynolds had promised him money, so in the short term, he would have to practice his football skills on the computer. As a kid, he liked nearly all computer games outside of sports, first and third person shooters like the Duke Nuke’m and Grand Theft Auto series, fantasy role playing games like Diablo 3, real time strategy games like the numerous versions and upgrades of Starcraft and Age of Empires games, and even turn based games like the Civilization models. He liked to kill and win world domination in the cyber world.

Hobson had had few friends growing up and generally played alone though he delved a little into the massive multiplayer games online like World of Warcraft and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. He was never a good team player and insulted those below his own level. Sports was another matter altogether, but football was not all that complicated from a controller standpoint, run, pass, maneuver, what else was there? To keep Reynolds’ secrets he would have to be the master controller for Jess, once or if he ever got his puppet on the field. There would be no one else neither as experienced nor with the understanding that he had of the brain’s ability to control and order motor function.

“What do you get when you cross a cow with a duck? Cheese and Quackers! What do you get when you cross a dinosaur with a pig? Jurassic Pork!”

Antwan Randall Jackson