AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

need to struggle to enter search parameters. He simply desired it. And the information was relayed to him not as words and numbers painstakingly visualized, but as ideas and thoughts. At first, it came too fast, but then he realized he was still trying to translate the ideas into words, instead of simply comprehending the idea.
    “So, exactly how does this work?” Yamaguchi asked Feore.
    “Huh, oh well, I guess it won’t hurt telling you.” He tore himself away from looking at the various screens and addressed her. “Remember when you first learned how to use your terminal to communicate with your partner directly?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Has it gotten any easier?”
    “Sure.”
    “Be honest. Can you really hold an extended conversation with him?”
    “No. If I wanted to do that, I’d just speak out loud.”
    “Exactly. Because it just takes way too much concentration. You see, some people think the terminal is reading your thoughts, but in reality, what you’re really doing in order to make the terminal understand, is projecting your thoughts into the field. You’re really doing the mental equivalent of screaming out loud to project your thoughts.”
    She nodded. She recalled her early days of using the terminal without speaking. She couldn’t walk at the same time she was trying to form her thoughts. It took that much concentration.
    “I don’t know about you, but the mental image I was taught is a chalkboard. I imagine I’m writing really large letters on the chalkboard, writing with the edge of the chalk rather than the point, to make the letters as big and fat as possible. I’m still pretty bad at it. I have to write one letter at a time.”
    She nodded again. That was the first method she was taught and it was painstaking. The method she now used was to imagine the Japanese brush script writing her father had taught her. It let her flow the letters together to form words at a time instead of a letter at a time.
    “And that’s how the disembodied start out. They go through the same process, imagining a letter at a time, then a word. The good ones, however, like your partner, I suspect, have gone way beyond that. They translate their internal speech directly into text, like someone taking dictation from themselves.
    “But the next generation of the AfterNet field does away with that. It really is reading thoughts, and it projects thought, too.”
    “Why’d you ask me if he was straight?”
    He laughed. “I just wanted to suggest something to him. That’s why I said he might hear a female voice. Chances are, that’s what he’ll hear.”
    “He can’t hear.”
    “Technically true. But his brain or mind or whatever it is the dead have, will trick him into thinking he’s hearing.”
    “One other question. Why’s this chamber so big?”
    “It doesn’t really have to be. We could probably make it as small as a … I don’t know, basketball. But it’s designed to be used for hours at a time and a lot of disembodied will not willingly go into something that small.”
    “He’s doing better than any other subject,” Younger said, interrupting.
    Feore turned to her. “Throughput?” he asked.
    “Phenomenal. He’s … he’s waiting. Processors are … it’s slowing down. Damn, two of the machines are down because I was upgrading them over the holidays.”
    “OK, let’s start using the processor farm in lab B. I don’t think …” he took out his tablet and scrolled through a schedule. “Nope, nothing going on in there today.”
    “What’s wrong?” Yamaguchi asked.
    “Nothing. This is great. Alex is doing … he’s great. This confirms what I thought. Look, Alex, is he … can he do more than one thing at a time? I don’t mean regular stuff, like browse the web while holding a conversation. Most everyone can multitask. Can he, can he hold more than one conversation at a time?”
    “How would I know? I’m the only one he really talks to.” Suddenly she remembered when he’d talked about his chats at the Tattered Cover or at his Starbucks.
    “All right, the processor farm is kicking in,” Younger said.
    I want to compare these IP addresses and these, Alex said.
    “I’m sorry, Alex, that information is unavailable.”
    You had it a second ago.
    “I’m sorry, Alex, that …”
    Suddenly the information appeared. Alex grabbed it.
    How do I open a spreadsheet? Oh, thanks. Wow. That’s different. OK, I strip away … yeah … that just leaves … right, that’s a