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Mind in a Bottle

By Sorin

The whirring hum of the flywheels was constant background noise in the lab. Getting an early start never seemed to bother me, ever since I got used to the sound of the flywheels it became almost soothing to listen. So much work could get done in the early mornings as the wheels hummed, the soft hiss of the steam boilers deep below lending them power, ever throbbing and growling deep inside the building.

"Good morning Dr. Carter." The cougar's wave was always distracted in the morning. Until he got his tea and doctored it with lemon he was almost impossible to speak to, answering questions, or revelation with a grunt and a nod.

After he had his tea; however, he was a completely different man. "Ty, I like the results we got from the 20 Milliamp burst, so we are going to try that one again." And the day would start like that. Hours of charging the Tesla coils for a momentary burst through the Æther rings. Gages would record the feedback; their ratings transferred to neat little columns on ledgers and then would come the tests. Response, memory and rational thinking would all be analyzed by batteries of written tests, and asked questions. I would be there for all of it as Dr. Carter took notes, assisting him in his work.

***

"Doctor Carter, shouldn't you be going home about now?" Normally I would never think to question the doctor's schedule; he was always a punctual man. Almost every night he was out the door at 8pm on the dot, leaving me to close down the lab. I always assumed that the Doctor had a wife and family to hurry home to, not that I had asked.

There was also a bit of a selfish reason for not asking, to tell the truth. I liked having the doctor around. I had this image of the doctor as a stoic bachelor living alone, consumed by his work. I liked that image, it appealed to my sense of order, that perhaps my obsession with the doctor's work was shared by more than just myself. To much prying into the doctor's life could very easily result in not only a loss of those images, but a loss of perspective in the doctor himself.

"No, I have some things to finish up here tonight." The cougar shuffled a few pieces of paper on his desk. I quieted after that. If I had learned anything about Dr. Carter, it was a definite sense of when he was giving one of his underlings a dismissal. I thought back to the first time he had made a presentation on his work to the members of the college board of directors. He had told them about his proposal. His idea of using jolts of electrons through Æther rings to stimulate intelligence in a brain, contained in a lightning jar, maintained by a steam powered life support.

They had laughed at him. But people always laugh a genius. They almost kicked him from the university that day, I remember them saying that they were not going to give him money for theoretical, dangerous and immoral research. I had to bite my tongue to not come to his defense, to tell them that the work was more than theoretical, that the machine was built, was running under their feet.

He would have been so angry than, if I had spoken. I was told to be quiet during the director's visits, and because of my silence every one ignored me. It was that meeting though that I first learned the doctor's mannerisms for a dismissal. It was when he promised the directors that he would not work on his outlandish ideas and would instead work on the Tesla cannon for the military. He brushed them off with the thought that they had won, and returned to his work.

Of course, he worked on the cannon as well, or more to the point had me do it, after all, that is what associates are for. I would work late into the night on the rather routine and simple task of calculating output for the cannon while at the same time letting the doctor work on the more forward thinking project of bottling intelligence.

And we made progress! The Æther bolts got more and more refined, and the I.Q. Measures got higher and higher. The doctor joked some times, especially to himself while speaking into the Dictaphone, that he had no doubt that the "Bottled Brain" as he called the experiment, had already become smarter than he.

I turned my thoughts outward from contemplation out into the room where the doctor was still hunched over his desk, scribbling on his notes. The dim, yellow light caught his tawny pelt in a way I had always found rather fetching, though with the way he was surrounded by darkness now was a bit more sinister than I would normally choose to acknowledge.

"It's all coming to a close." He said suddenly looking over in my direction. The soft whir of the flywheels came back to me as his eyes, catching the arc light in the bulbs glittered in the semidarkness between us. "The results are almost complete, and I think the Dean's might be suspicious." He set his pen down.

I remember when the doctor first told me of his experiment. I was like a child, and many of the concepts were very alien to me. He had been so kind than, not hardened by the darker dealings, seeking around, and misleading the board's inspectors. He had worked with me so that I understood the science, the concepts behind his project, and it was something I cherished.

"But you should be pleased, the work is almost finished! You can show them the results, show them your genius!" Dr. Carter frowned than and shook his head "No Ty. Genius though it may be, there are very few in this country that would accept my work, especially in such an unfinished form."

He had spoken of that before. The aspect of his project he had not told the Directors, and would not tell them was that the bottled brain project was just that. A brain had to be acquired and used, stimulated by the Æther to grow in intelligence until it surpassed the flesh's capacity to think and reason. The brain was the key and the sticking point of the whole experiment.

Not just any brain would do, it had to be healthy, and in his estimation already have the capacity to think well. A scientist, or a doctors brain would work best he often told me. It also had to show a certain resilience to survive the bottling process, and lastly, and most controversially it must be alive when the process began. The Bottling removed the intelligence, the memories from the brain and left it like a child to begin, but oh how quickly it could learn, think and reason we found.

Once the brain began to learn it was a self-perpetuating process. It would learn from its self, teaching with whatever was available to it. "Ty my boy, we have had a good run together for sure." Dr. Carter stood at that going over to the panels where the gages showed the steam pressure, the Æther load, and stood before the dials. "We have collected a lot of good data that will further my research. But it cannot end with this. I must keep my work going, and I cannot do so from inside a Cell. So the experiments must end before they come looking, poking their distinguished noses into my research." He reached up and closed the steam valve as I watched, shocked. The valve led to the steam pumps that drove the Æther generators and kept the experiment alive.

"You're turning it off? But we are not finished! You said we would finish the project, that the first bottled intellect would be monumental and last forever!"

Dr. Carter threw the toggle cutting the Æther field and the lab grew darker, the sparks inside the lightning bottle beginning to fade as he walked over to it. The cougar places his paw on the glass of the bottle lightly.

"Ty, you were a good lab assistant, and an even better subject, but I'm afraid the first bottled intellect will not be your mind." The sparks faded, dying like the brain floating in the suspension gel. The doctor patted the bottle that held all that was left of Ty like a father might idly pat his son's head. "I will try again, your sacrifice won't be in vain Ty, never you worry." Dr. Carter covered the machine, and turned off the laboratory lights. The hum of the flywheels was gone, and now, the lab was empty.