Something to be Proud Of

Chapter 15: Don’t Play with Your Food

Mel had been talking to his soup again. He got out of his chair, and dumped another jar of orange protein powder into the sorter. He slumped back into his swivel chair behind the console. He leisurely tapped at the keyboard, talking aloud, “How do I phrase this? Ok, you stupid soup, you gotta do something useful today.” He had taught his pond a vocabulary of over 10,000 “smells,” but thus far, had only gotten it to make basic associations.

Yet, people had taught monkeys to do complex arithmetic with simple Pavlovian training. He loaded up a binary sequence and hit “enter’. A mist bled into the tank, and the phosphorescent cells in his soup swarmed about the boundaries, almost eager to be fed. The speed at which information spread across the pool always amazed him, even though he intellectually knew the speed of diffusion. Cells were tasting his commands, conducting molecular gymnastics, signalling each other…

Mel had long since lost track of what they were doing. It was far too complex to write down even the simplest equations for the interactions. This was pointless and addictive, like a stupid video game. Sooner or later, he was going to have to publish something about all this, or lose his funding.

Mel had tried to explain his soup to friends and colleagues: “It’s a massive tongue and a nose. Or more appropriately, it’s an immune system. ...”

“Mel – it is a vat of scum, and it don’t smell too good.”

Desperately…Mel kept up his explanation, like intellectual vomit: “You see: all three use the same receptors: the same Immunoglobulin gene library. They all are in the business of binding to chemical shapes. Antibodies, olfactory receptors, taste buds, they are all basically the same. The immune system memorizes molecule of self, remembers past insults, reacts to foreign molecules. The nose identifies toxic smells …”

“It’s got all the basic functionality of a logic circuit.”

At least Buck was following, “Yes, but it is so primitive, we haven’t the slightest notion how it works, not what it does.”

His detractors had a point, “What is relevant to a being that can only taste or smell, anyway? Food and poison.”

The console signalled the soup’s response:

[Four] [More] [Food]

“Well it is about fucking time!” Mel said aloud, but what came next surprised him:

[More] [Not]