Experimenting with a new style of story... hope you like it. Feel free to comment!
***************
Mindtech lab, private memo of Cathy, 20. March 2024
We called it ‘The Third Eye’.
While Quattros mind interface system was either a large tube or at least a tight helmet, the 3E was the first success to miniaturize it. Most of us calling it the best augmented reality interface we know.
The first Third Eye was a more limited and specialized design without the ability to read and write the memory and personality of a person. Its circuits and effectors were focused on reading and writing the sensor processing part of the brain. It allowed an external computer to project optical and acoustic data into the brain or recording incoming data.
With some training, a catgirl could learn to use the Third Eye to focus her thought in a way the computer could record, which allowed to use it similar to a neural link of a cyborg. As soon as they became available, the Third Eye quickly replacing other augmented reality systems used by Catgirl Industries. Improved versions could even read the mood and stress levels of the user and projecting them to another 3E user, enabling some kind of voluntary empathy.
Unfortunately, while we thought the device was safe to use in 2021, we also discovered a few pit traps during the further development of the technology.
-----
“Cathy, you better come down to the Mindtech lab right now. Something strange is going on here!”
Vivio’s voice sounded concerned and Cathy quickly hurried towards the lab area where they were experimenting with the Mind Computer interface tech they had acquired from Quattro years ago.
When Cathy arrived at the door of the lab, Vivio was already waiting for her.
“Something bad happened?” she asked, but Vivio just shrugged with her shoulders.
“I am not sure, they had planned a test with an improved Third Eye today... but when I entered the lab, I noticed something was off” Vivio answered. “Just ask Jenny what is going on, you will see what happens.”
Jenny was a special case among the catgirls of Jenga, the first and only successful Alpha Fork of a catgirl. Her "sister" Jerry had been both a successful Eezo and Mindtech researcher, which put her into a difficult situation when most of the Eezo research moved to Nostromo.
In an acute fit of Mad Science Jerry had locked herself into her private lab for a whole week in Mid 2019, trying to implement the methods of a paper about medical cloning from the Vesta Institute and sidestepping problems by running the result through a modified catgirling machine. When the catgirls broke the doors of the lab a week later, they found two identical catgirls sleeping in the burned out remainders of the laboratory. Jerry had successfully copied her whole mind content into the clones empty brain, duplicating herself effectively. But neither of them could remember what happened during the week.
In the end Jerry moved out to Nostromo to continue her research on Eezo while Jenny stayed on Jenga, working with the Mind Tech team. Both catgirls were still exchanging ideas and news on a regular basis and Jenny stated she wanted to transfer memories between each other.
“Jenny, I heard there are some issues” Cathy stated as she pushed open the lab doors and looked around. “Maybe you can tell me why Vivio is a bit concerned?”
Two catgirls smiled as they heard Jenny’s name and Cathy had the feeling both wanted to say something. They looked at each other for a moment and then one of them chuckled.
“Don’t worry Cathy, everything is working fine. We are just testing a new Third Eye” one of them said. “I can assure you there is no need to worry about.”
“Neither of you are Jenny.” Cathy stated flatly and looked through the room where the catgirl she recognized as Jenny was working. “I'd like to hear from Jenny herself!”
The two catgirls looked at each other again with a confused look.
“Are you sure?”
----
I tried to talk with Jenny a few times, but it was a frustrating experience. She seemed to be distracted and looking just confused when I asked to talk with her in private.
But it wasn't looking that they had a bad time... everyone in the lab was focused on their work, smiling about some insight I could not even see.
The lab was much more quiet than usual, but their speed of work was astonishing. I was feeling a bit frustrated not being able to follow them quickly enough. This was one of my major research areas too!
From time to time one of them was smiling at me or patting on my shoulder, telling me that everything was fine and I should not worry. But nobody was willing to stop working, not even for a short walk into the Cafeteria to get a snack.
I finally gave up and asked Vivio to help me setting up some measurement equipment. We had to find out what was going on in the lab.
----
“How could this have happened Vivio” Cathy said and sighed. “I thought we were a bit more careful, how could a large part of the team develop completely new hardware and test it on themselves without telling anyone?”
“I do not think its new hardware Cathy” Vivio replied, “they are just using the newest iteration of the Third Eye hardware. I checked it myself, they just decided to use it in a different way than normal.”
“Different way? Vivio, we have a group of researchers who still can do successful research but are not sure who they are anymore!” Cathy spit out. “Thats a little bit more than the Third Eye should be able to do.”
“I agree, but they let me look through their logfiles. They started this morning with a new software that allowed direct mind-to-mind communication in voice and images. Seems to be very easy, almost reflexive to use. Think about it, instead of asking your team members a question you just think it and you get a visual answer within the blink of an eye.”
“Okay, I can see that this is a little bit unusual” Cathy said, “but that doesn’t explain their current behaviour!”
“No, it doesn’t... but they kept working through the day and the whole communication network somehow became synchronized. Thoughts flying back and forth without much conscious thinking.” Vivio explained. “And then this noon the group wrote a patch to increase the bandwidth of the Brain-Machine interface. Instead of sharing images and text, they were able to push whole blocks of memory through their Third Eye. It seems to require a special kind of concentration, but they say its easy to do after getting used to it.”
“Wait a moment... you say they use a small clip-on interface to extract and integrate full memories?” Cathy asked as her hairs stood on edge. “Where do they get the storage space to filter them?”
“I am not sure, they are using the connection directly brain to brain, no filter involved. Which meant they didn’t even need to formulate an answer to a question, they just send the experience they would use themselves as a reply” Vivio said. “But they quickly ran into a well known problem. You cannot just send raw knowledge without its context, it takes time to integrate this kind of data into your own experience. But they found a solution for this, they just transferred the context too.”
“They can’t, there is not enough unused memory in a metahuman brain to add this much data that quickly” Cathy protested, “not without overwriting parts of your own knowledge and memory.”
“You are right, but there is a horrible elegant solution for this” Vivio acknowledged. “You don’t copy the knowledge and context to someone, you swap it with something you know. Which got them into the mess they are at in. Somehow their thought processes began to distribute themselves through the network.”
“And now we have to find a way to separate them again” Cathy said and sighed. “That will be difficult.”
“First we have to persuade them that we may separate them at all Cathy! They are excited, they are feeling good. I am not sure they will agree to stop their little experiment!”
----
Vivio was right, they were feeling well, almost ecstatic. We tried to talk them into slowly dropping their connections, but they just refused.
They were still working on some details of the Third Eye, increasing the scalability of their link and allowing more catgirls to join them. Luckily they were running into a couple of hardware issues with the wireless link, otherwise the number of affected catgirls could have grown quite quickly.
After wasting an hour trying to persuade them to stop the experiment, we started bringing in more equipment to the lab next door to get a better look at the communication details that were happening. The situation looked stable enough so we had enough time to setup everything.
At least we believed we had.
Just an hour later the train wreck we were watching began to speed up again.
----
"Cathy?" one of the catgirls asked, "can you maybe do us a favor?"
"Sure... did you thought again about the arguments to stop your link in a controlled way so we can work on replicating it later?" Cathy answered. "We are all worried about you, we just want to help!"
"No no, Cathy... you should try it yourself, you would understand why we don't want to stop. We are doing great work here, it is exciting and fun!" she answered. "But we are still working on a few small quirks on the network... which is the reason why we need your help."
"Few small quirks" Cathy murmured, but then she nodded. "Tell me what is the problem and we can see how we can solve it."
"No, they are not really quirks... but they are annoying. You have to understand, we store everything we share between each other in short term memory, otherwise we wouldn't have enough memory" the catgirl said, "but it degrades fast unless you allow it to become long term memory."
"But you are not losing anything at the moment, right?" Cathy asked carefully.
"No, we do not loose anything. Think about it like juggling, we just keep the memories up in the air, transfer them between each other before they can degrade. Its a great solution, but it has a drawback."
Cathy folded her arms and looked skeptic at the catgirl.
"Cathy, we just have a little transmission delay problem. As long as we keep together, everything is fine. But if we split up and some of us go to the Cafeteria the connection will lag... and we will get errors in the swapping procedure!"
Cathy thought about this for a moment, then she suddenly looked horrified.
"You are in trouble and we don't have much time!" she said. "You are worried about a trivia and don't recognize the wall you will hit soon!"
"Cathy, its okay... if you can just get us some food from the kitchen we can stay together. Give us some time and we will solve this problem, do not worry."
"Oh yes, the food..." Cathy said and sighed. "Forget the damned food! If getting out of distance is a problem, I want to see how you get through the first night of sleep without messing everyone up!"
***************
Mindtech lab, private memo of Cathy, 20. March 2024
We called it ‘The Third Eye’.
While Quattros mind interface system was either a large tube or at least a tight helmet, the 3E was the first success to miniaturize it. Most of us calling it the best augmented reality interface we know.
The first Third Eye was a more limited and specialized design without the ability to read and write the memory and personality of a person. Its circuits and effectors were focused on reading and writing the sensor processing part of the brain. It allowed an external computer to project optical and acoustic data into the brain or recording incoming data.
With some training, a catgirl could learn to use the Third Eye to focus her thought in a way the computer could record, which allowed to use it similar to a neural link of a cyborg. As soon as they became available, the Third Eye quickly replacing other augmented reality systems used by Catgirl Industries. Improved versions could even read the mood and stress levels of the user and projecting them to another 3E user, enabling some kind of voluntary empathy.
Unfortunately, while we thought the device was safe to use in 2021, we also discovered a few pit traps during the further development of the technology.
-----
“Cathy, you better come down to the Mindtech lab right now. Something strange is going on here!”
Vivio’s voice sounded concerned and Cathy quickly hurried towards the lab area where they were experimenting with the Mind Computer interface tech they had acquired from Quattro years ago.
When Cathy arrived at the door of the lab, Vivio was already waiting for her.
“Something bad happened?” she asked, but Vivio just shrugged with her shoulders.
“I am not sure, they had planned a test with an improved Third Eye today... but when I entered the lab, I noticed something was off” Vivio answered. “Just ask Jenny what is going on, you will see what happens.”
Jenny was a special case among the catgirls of Jenga, the first and only successful Alpha Fork of a catgirl. Her "sister" Jerry had been both a successful Eezo and Mindtech researcher, which put her into a difficult situation when most of the Eezo research moved to Nostromo.
In an acute fit of Mad Science Jerry had locked herself into her private lab for a whole week in Mid 2019, trying to implement the methods of a paper about medical cloning from the Vesta Institute and sidestepping problems by running the result through a modified catgirling machine. When the catgirls broke the doors of the lab a week later, they found two identical catgirls sleeping in the burned out remainders of the laboratory. Jerry had successfully copied her whole mind content into the clones empty brain, duplicating herself effectively. But neither of them could remember what happened during the week.
In the end Jerry moved out to Nostromo to continue her research on Eezo while Jenny stayed on Jenga, working with the Mind Tech team. Both catgirls were still exchanging ideas and news on a regular basis and Jenny stated she wanted to transfer memories between each other.
“Jenny, I heard there are some issues” Cathy stated as she pushed open the lab doors and looked around. “Maybe you can tell me why Vivio is a bit concerned?”
Two catgirls smiled as they heard Jenny’s name and Cathy had the feeling both wanted to say something. They looked at each other for a moment and then one of them chuckled.
“Don’t worry Cathy, everything is working fine. We are just testing a new Third Eye” one of them said. “I can assure you there is no need to worry about.”
“Neither of you are Jenny.” Cathy stated flatly and looked through the room where the catgirl she recognized as Jenny was working. “I'd like to hear from Jenny herself!”
The two catgirls looked at each other again with a confused look.
“Are you sure?”
----
I tried to talk with Jenny a few times, but it was a frustrating experience. She seemed to be distracted and looking just confused when I asked to talk with her in private.
But it wasn't looking that they had a bad time... everyone in the lab was focused on their work, smiling about some insight I could not even see.
The lab was much more quiet than usual, but their speed of work was astonishing. I was feeling a bit frustrated not being able to follow them quickly enough. This was one of my major research areas too!
From time to time one of them was smiling at me or patting on my shoulder, telling me that everything was fine and I should not worry. But nobody was willing to stop working, not even for a short walk into the Cafeteria to get a snack.
I finally gave up and asked Vivio to help me setting up some measurement equipment. We had to find out what was going on in the lab.
----
“How could this have happened Vivio” Cathy said and sighed. “I thought we were a bit more careful, how could a large part of the team develop completely new hardware and test it on themselves without telling anyone?”
“I do not think its new hardware Cathy” Vivio replied, “they are just using the newest iteration of the Third Eye hardware. I checked it myself, they just decided to use it in a different way than normal.”
“Different way? Vivio, we have a group of researchers who still can do successful research but are not sure who they are anymore!” Cathy spit out. “Thats a little bit more than the Third Eye should be able to do.”
“I agree, but they let me look through their logfiles. They started this morning with a new software that allowed direct mind-to-mind communication in voice and images. Seems to be very easy, almost reflexive to use. Think about it, instead of asking your team members a question you just think it and you get a visual answer within the blink of an eye.”
“Okay, I can see that this is a little bit unusual” Cathy said, “but that doesn’t explain their current behaviour!”
“No, it doesn’t... but they kept working through the day and the whole communication network somehow became synchronized. Thoughts flying back and forth without much conscious thinking.” Vivio explained. “And then this noon the group wrote a patch to increase the bandwidth of the Brain-Machine interface. Instead of sharing images and text, they were able to push whole blocks of memory through their Third Eye. It seems to require a special kind of concentration, but they say its easy to do after getting used to it.”
“Wait a moment... you say they use a small clip-on interface to extract and integrate full memories?” Cathy asked as her hairs stood on edge. “Where do they get the storage space to filter them?”
“I am not sure, they are using the connection directly brain to brain, no filter involved. Which meant they didn’t even need to formulate an answer to a question, they just send the experience they would use themselves as a reply” Vivio said. “But they quickly ran into a well known problem. You cannot just send raw knowledge without its context, it takes time to integrate this kind of data into your own experience. But they found a solution for this, they just transferred the context too.”
“They can’t, there is not enough unused memory in a metahuman brain to add this much data that quickly” Cathy protested, “not without overwriting parts of your own knowledge and memory.”
“You are right, but there is a horrible elegant solution for this” Vivio acknowledged. “You don’t copy the knowledge and context to someone, you swap it with something you know. Which got them into the mess they are at in. Somehow their thought processes began to distribute themselves through the network.”
“And now we have to find a way to separate them again” Cathy said and sighed. “That will be difficult.”
“First we have to persuade them that we may separate them at all Cathy! They are excited, they are feeling good. I am not sure they will agree to stop their little experiment!”
----
Vivio was right, they were feeling well, almost ecstatic. We tried to talk them into slowly dropping their connections, but they just refused.
They were still working on some details of the Third Eye, increasing the scalability of their link and allowing more catgirls to join them. Luckily they were running into a couple of hardware issues with the wireless link, otherwise the number of affected catgirls could have grown quite quickly.
After wasting an hour trying to persuade them to stop the experiment, we started bringing in more equipment to the lab next door to get a better look at the communication details that were happening. The situation looked stable enough so we had enough time to setup everything.
At least we believed we had.
Just an hour later the train wreck we were watching began to speed up again.
----
"Cathy?" one of the catgirls asked, "can you maybe do us a favor?"
"Sure... did you thought again about the arguments to stop your link in a controlled way so we can work on replicating it later?" Cathy answered. "We are all worried about you, we just want to help!"
"No no, Cathy... you should try it yourself, you would understand why we don't want to stop. We are doing great work here, it is exciting and fun!" she answered. "But we are still working on a few small quirks on the network... which is the reason why we need your help."
"Few small quirks" Cathy murmured, but then she nodded. "Tell me what is the problem and we can see how we can solve it."
"No, they are not really quirks... but they are annoying. You have to understand, we store everything we share between each other in short term memory, otherwise we wouldn't have enough memory" the catgirl said, "but it degrades fast unless you allow it to become long term memory."
"But you are not losing anything at the moment, right?" Cathy asked carefully.
"No, we do not loose anything. Think about it like juggling, we just keep the memories up in the air, transfer them between each other before they can degrade. Its a great solution, but it has a drawback."
Cathy folded her arms and looked skeptic at the catgirl.
"Cathy, we just have a little transmission delay problem. As long as we keep together, everything is fine. But if we split up and some of us go to the Cafeteria the connection will lag... and we will get errors in the swapping procedure!"
Cathy thought about this for a moment, then she suddenly looked horrified.
"You are in trouble and we don't have much time!" she said. "You are worried about a trivia and don't recognize the wall you will hit soon!"
"Cathy, its okay... if you can just get us some food from the kitchen we can stay together. Give us some time and we will solve this problem, do not worry."
"Oh yes, the food..." Cathy said and sighed. "Forget the damned food! If getting out of distance is a problem, I want to see how you get through the first night of sleep without messing everyone up!"
