Neal Stephenson - Interface

It all became clear the first time they put a remote control into his hand. By that time, his fingers had developed enough co­ordination to wrap around the underside of the remote and hold it in place, giving that thumb, now highly coordinated, the freedom to roam around on its top surface, punching buttons. Changing channels. Moving the volume up and down. Activating the VCR to tape certain programs, then playing them back later.

They decided to give him a test. They arranged a dinner party on a Thursday evening at seven o'clock, knowing that it would interfere with Cozzano's favorite TV show, a satirical cartoon. He passed that test with flying colors; without any hints or prompting from the therapy team, he used his thumb to program his VCR.

"He still knows how to do it," said the head computer person, Peter (Zeldo) Zeldovich. He was awed. "I mean, I wrote half of the Calyx operating system. But I can't program a VCR."

"His memory seems pretty good," Mary Catherine said. She had driven down from Chicago to attend the dinner, then snuck up to the hallway outside the master bedroom to see Dad rewind the videotape and play back his favourite program.

The other bedrooms had been turned into a high-tech wonder­land. Zeldo filled Mary Catherine's old bedroom with computers and James's with communications gear. Mom's sewing room was full of medical stuff. The two guest bedrooms were set up with bunk beds and mattresses on the floor so that the nurses and therapists could alternate between sleeping and working without leaving the house.

Everything that Dad did now - every tiny motion of his thumb, every twitch of his lips - had huge informational ramifications that Zeldo could plot and graph on his computer screens. Thousands of connections had now grown into place between Dad's neurons and the biochip, and hundreds of new ones were still being made every day. All of the impulses passing from his brain outward into his body and back passed through these connections, and could be monitored by the biochip. Even when Dad was sleeping, it amounted to an overwhelming flow of information, like all the telephone calls being made into or out of Manhattan at a given time.

There was no way to understand all of it. No way to keep track. The best that Zeldo could do was keep a running tab on what was happening, building up a statistical database, maybe get some sense of which connections were being used for the thumb and which for the left eyebrow. Still, it was fascinating to watch.

That all of these things worked was no news. The chip had worked in the baboons and it had worked in Mohinder Singh, after all. The real question on their minds was: how much damage had the strokes done to other parts of Cozzano's mind, for example, memory, personality, cognitive skills?

The fact that he still wanted to watch the same TV show, still thought it was funny, and still knew how to program his VCR answered several questions. It was good news on all fronts.

But mostly Cozzano watched the news and public affairs pro­grams about the presidential campaign. They would pin the latest newspapers and magazines up on a reading stand in front of his face and he would pore over them, his eyes flicking back and forth between the coverage on the televisions and the printed page.

Only then - after he had got control of the TV channels and had caught up on the newspapers - only then did he start working on speech.

They set an ambitious schedule for him, worrying that they might stress him out and overwork him, and he left that schedule in the dust. First thing in the morning, the physical therapists came in, at first helping him move his limbs, later, when he got the hang of that, running him through exercises. Then the speech therapist came in and got him to put his tongue and lips in certain positions, got him to make certain sounds, and then to string those sounds together into syllables and words. Following an afternoon nap, the physical therapists would come back in and work on the parts of his body that they had missed in the morning. During the evenings he could relax, watch TV, read.

He exercised his speech during physical therapy and he exercised his body during speech therapy. He also exercised both of them while he was pretending to take his afternoon nap, and then he exercised them all evening long when he was supposed to be taking it easy. He even woke up in the middle of the night and exercised.

Getting up out of the wheelchair was an ambitious goal that he wouldn't attempt for a few weeks. In the meantime there were a few things he couldn't do for himself, such as going to the toilet, taking baths, carrying in wood for the fireplace, and swapping tapes in and out of the VCR. Nurses, aides, and family members had to do these things for him.

Almost two weeks after the implant, Mary Catherine came down for another visit. She had been doing so much driving that they had gone to the trouble of leasing a car, a brand-new Acura luxury sedan, so that she could make the trip in comfort and safety. The evening she arrived, she had a conversation with Dad.

"Vee... Cee...rrr," he said.

"VCR. You want me to do something with the VCR?"

"Yes."

"Okay. What do you want me to do?"

Dad aimed the remote shakily toward the TV cabinet and hit the EJECT button. The VCR spat out a tape.

"You want me to take this out?"

"Yes."

"You want me to put a different tape in?"

"Yes."

The TV cabinet had a shelf along the top with a few dozen videotapes in it, mostly old family tapes or favourite movies. Mary Catherine began running her finger along the line of tapes.

"New!" Dad blurted.

"You want a new tape?"

"Blank."

"You want a blank tape."

"Yes."

Mary Catherine rummaged around in the cabinet until she found a six-pack of fresh blank videocassettes. Dad always bought them half a dozen at a time at Wal-Mart. He always bought everything in vast, bulk quantities, dirt cheap, in huge drafty warehouse like stores out in the middle of the prairie.

She unwrapped one and stuck it into the machine. "Okay, what should I do with this old one?" she asked, wiggling the tape she had just removed"

"Label."

The fresh videotape had come shipped with a number of blank labels. She peeled a couple of them back and stuck them on to the black shell of the cassette. Then she dug a small felt-tipped marker out of her purse. "What do you want to call this?"

Dad rolled his eyes as if to indicate that this was not important, he would remember what it was. Mary Catherine grinned and looked him in the eye, pen poised over the tape, challenging him.

He looked her right back in the eye. "Eee... lack... sun."

"Election."

"One," Dad said. The fingers of his hand trembled and jerked uncertainly. Finally the index finger extended, while the other fingers clenched into a loose, jittering fist.

"Election One," Mary Catherine repeated, writing it on to the top and side of the tape. "Does this imply that it's the first in a series?"

Dad rolled his eyes again.

Later, after he had gone to sleep, Mary Catherine curled up on the living room sofa with a bag of microwave popcorn, rewound "Election One," and watched it.

It was outtakes from election-related news coverage from the past week or week and a half, ever since Dad's thumb had gotten nimble enough to control the machine. Most of it had to do with the peculiar, stereotyped behavior patterns of men competing in state primary elections. It made good training for a neurologist. Hours and hours of men walking around under bright lights, moving with the spasmodic gait of candidates. A candidate walked on two legs like a normal man, but every time he sensed that he was in a position that would make a good photograph, he would stop and freeze for a moment as if suffering a petit mal seizure, and turn toward the nearest battery of cameras. No candidate could climb on board a vehicle or enter a building without freezing for a moment and giving the thumbs-up. Handshakes all lasted for hours, and the candidate never looked at the person whose hand he was shaking; he looked toward the audience.