Wired - Douglas E. Richards [131]
In the past year they had recruited dozens of top people from every field, carefully vetted according to Desh’s plan, who had made breathtaking discoveries that would soon transform the world. But the original five who were gathered together now still formed the core leadership, and it seemed only fitting that they be the sole witnesses to the greatest experiment of them all.
Inside the plexiglass enclosure, Kira gasped. She clenched her teeth in agony. The transformation had begun.
David Desh watched his wife helplessly as her agony intensified for almost thirty seconds.
Just as suddenly as it had begun, the tortured expression left her face and was replaced by a look of serenity more complete than any Desh had ever witnessed. There was a radiance to her now; an ethereal glow. Desh knew that while her outer demeanor was utterly peaceful, her mind was now churning at an inconceivably furious pace. He shook his head in awe and trepidation. Through what new galaxies of thought was she now traversing?
The five minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. Kira’s vital signs were being monitored, and her breathing and heartbeat had become as steady as an atomic clock; a sure sign she was in the enhanced state. Her eyes had been closed since the transformation had begun, and she hadn’t moved a centimeter; nor had she uttered a single word.
Without warning her vital signs lost their perfect rhythm. She was back! She had returned from her extraordinary voyage.
Desh blew out the breath he had been holding for some time now, relieved.
The countenances of his three friends all brightened beside him as well.
But there was a hurdle yet to jump, Desh knew. Would she be the same woman with whom he had fallen in love, or would this experience, this new reordering of her neurons, change her in unpredictable ways?
Forty seconds passed and her eyes remained closed. David Desh suddenly found it hard to take a breath. Had something gone wrong?
He checked the digital clock counting down on the monitor next to her still-strong vital signs. They had agreed not to enter her cell until a full ten minutes after the effect appeared to have reversed, just to be sure. Desh’s desire to rush in and hold her, and confirm that nothing was amiss, was so all consuming it took every ounce of his will to suppress it.
He stared at the digital clock as the seconds continued to pass; willing them to go faster.
Kira slammed into normalcy like a starship traveling at warp speed crashing into an immovable object. The return to normalcy had been jarring before, but nothing could compare to this.
She shook off the shock of it and hastily searched her mind. Had she contemplated evil acts while on this transcendent plane of intelligence? Had she found Nietzsche’s will to power even more difficult to resist than before? Had she been even more contemptuous and dismissive of the species Homo sapiens?
Memories flooded back to her. They were but a pale shadow of a shadow of a shadow of her thoughts during the five-minute period—which had seemed to her to last for many hours—and the memories were in clumsy English rather than the precise and expansive symbolic logic her mind had been able to effortlessly manipulate while transformed.
But these wisps of memory were enough! She knew! Their greatest hopes had been realized. Their greatest fears put to rest. David had been right! Compassion and pure intellect were not mutually exclusive. And as her normal mind brushed over the faint echo of the conclusions she had reached while transformed, feelings of profound joy and contentment surged through her.
The baseline level of human thought was so plagued by emotion and instinct, so limited in power and rationality, that individuals could be readily fooled into believing almost any conjecture. At