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Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
Acknowledgements
The Northern Star novel series, in one semblance or another, has been in my head for nearly a decade. Time has helped bring it out, but so has the effort and encouragement of many friends and family. In no particular order (except for my wife, I live with her):
Melissa Gullickson
Put up with an absentee & moody husband.
My Parents
Listened to me lament over the phone when they just wanted to talk to their grandson.
Eric Tilton
An amazing artist & graphic designer.
Neal Tabachnick
Lawyer & Motivator.
Drea Clark/Justin McWilliams
Copy Editors.
Ruth Ratny
First person outside of friends & family to say “hey, you can write!”
James Aiden, Josh Newell, John Bruno, Brenden Clark, Brooks McLaren, Dan Snow,
Wes Ryle, Nick Bobetsky
Read the book when it wasn’t that good and gave me notes. If it’s still not good, it’s their fault.
For Melissa.
Your Support Means Everything.
Prologue
–Chicago. February 21st 2048. 4:00 a.m.–
Cynthia Revo hadn’t slept in three days. She and her team were close, very close. She’d imagined this day a thousand times over and the reality didn’t match the ideal. She had pictured herself awake, no bags under her eyes, her short red hair neatly combed. Fresh clothes without a wrinkle. Champagne. Smiles. Maybe a celebratory lay. That’s where her daydreams took her. But like all dreams, they were more fantasy than truth.
Her team of researchers had forced her to take a break. She dragged herself down the hall to her office and collapsed at her desk. Twenty foam coffee cups littered its surface, each with different levels of the fuel that had kept her upright. Five large computer monitors were mounted on the wall. The keyboard and mouse were lost somewhere in the maze of cups. A lab rat could find them, but it would take Cynthia a second or so. She was out in an instant.
The door crashed open and she shot her hands out, clearing the desk. Days old coffee splattered against the monitors and spilled onto the carpet. It took her a moment to realize where she was.
Harold Renki, one of her top programmers, looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“It’s working! It’s working!”
She looked at him like he was speaking another language. Not until he yanked her out of her chair did she understand completely. He dragged her toward the door until she got her legs moving to match his.
“When?!” she asked. She was still bleary and nauseous from the abrupt wakening.
“Just now, a minute, maybe. Tom’s burning through the test. It was what you thought.”
“Thousands?” she asked.
“Five thousand at this point.”
Five thousand micro-frequencies, to penetrate the brain and read the synapses as they fired. They had started with two, now they were up to five thousand. They had started with four meager servers. Now six hundred of the best supercomputers money could buy were in a machine room cooled to -50 degrees Celsius.
They rushed down the dull white hallway with its fluorescent lights and cheap decorations. An unremarkable place for the greatest invention the world had ever seen.
They slammed through the doors onto a landing above the testing floor. Thirty other scientists were below them—some biologists, some programmers, some physicists, some doctors—and they all turned with smiles that said it was worth it. That the five years were not in vain, not a dead end like some pundits opined. For visionaries, showing the rightness of their vision was always the most difficult, because the vast majority of people look in front of their feet, but rarely ahead. When the visionary was right, then the masses nod and line up, happy to be a part of it. Happy to think that they would have thought of it too—it was so obvious, after all.
Cynthia pushed past Harold and ran down the stairs. The crowd parted like the Red Sea and she saw the twenty by twenty Plexiglas cage where they kept Tom & Jerry.
Tom saw the short redheaded person press herself up against the clear wall. He was eating a banana and he understood that if he kept doing this thing the hairless monkeys wanted, he would keep getting bananas.
Jerry was bummed. Tom was eating bananas and he wasn’t. Jerry held a keypad. On it were four buttons: one green, one red, one yellow, one purple. In front of him was a computer monitor and at the bottom was a mirrored image of each button. When a picture appeared above one of them, he was supposed to press the corresponding button. Easy. He could do six per minute.
Tom didn’t have a keyboard. He wore a metal helmet on his head. Attached to it was a wire that ran outside the clear cage to another place and then back. Tom wanted more bananas and with the red headed pale ape watching, he knew this was his chance. He looked at the screen and played the game. His images flashed by at one per second.
Cynthia’s mouth was wide open. She watched Tom, the test chimp, tear through the image choices on screen using nothing but his mind. Jerry, the control, slapped at the keyboard every ten seconds or so.
The mind was finally free from its prison. Cynthia Revo closed her mouth and watched as Tom the chimp performed a miracle. This would change the world forever.