Jack and the Analytical Engine

I finally was able to get a hold of Jack; it was weird hearing from him after so much has happened.

Kaitlin has basically taken Jack’s earlier work and quickly made it her own. In fact she’s updated Adit’s system so that all of the wiring can be external of the skull. Now all Adit really would need is a cap but for aesthetic reasons they’ve been grafting the inputs below the scalp. Not only can the sensors on top of the skull record the firing of each neuron to record the memories – senses, and emotions, but the sensors can record the unique frequency of each neuron’s firing so the “playback” doesn’t actually have to be from “shocking” the effected area as before but actually by shocking the skull at the neuron’s frequency. The brain then thinks that neuron fired. This makes Adit’s new system exponentially more precise than the one Adit and Jack came up with years back. Rasa is now Adit 2.0 (God he’d kill me if he heard me say that). Its good to have Adit back. Rasa is almost completely gone now. Adit even slept last night and woke up knowing who we were, and what we were doing; basically knowing who he is.

All of the old hardware in the brain is no longer needed which is why we needed to get a hold of Jack. Occasionally the “playback” hits a frequency close to what the old hardware was tuned to – and when that happens we get instant seizures. Adit’s got a big ass bruise on his head from when the first one hit. With the new method for “playback” seizures are no longer supposed to be an issue.

When Rasa first came to me I was trying everything to get a hold of Jack, but truth is once I found out Kaitlin was on top of things and Ned had most of the specs, it didn’t become as necessary for me to find Jack – and I was kind of relived. Now we needed him. We can’t remove the old hardware without at least doing an itty bit of damage so what we need to do is map out all of the frequencies of the old hardware so that when Adit is experiencing a memory “play back” we skip anything that would conflict with the old hardware. Sure there might be itty bits of memory gaps here and there, but at most we’re talking about a blink. I forget more in ten minutes then Adit probably will over his lifetime.

Ned didn’t have that kind of detail on the hardware Jack used, so we hoped Jack did. And he did. Jack had the details in a secure area of one of his grid corners – we got the info instantly. But Jack really wanted from me was help with his new idea.

Jack wants to make and market desktop versions of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Yes you too can have an analog computer the size of a small room and made of iron and brass miniaturized to the size of a knick-knack for your desk. While I agree not many people have a fully functional metal analog computer of gears, rods, and levers as a paperweight, I’m not sure many would want one. Jack went on to explain that at first he was going to make Babbage’s Difference Engine because there were complete plans, but he thought everyone would just think of it as a cool Victorian calculator, but with the Analytical Engine each purchase would come with a stack of punch cards with programs ready to go. “Though no one would actually use it – it would be much more obvious to them and the friends they are showing it off to that it is indeed a computer.”

Jack needs to get out of state. He made a grid contact that can work on mass-producing the prototype Jack made after he finalized Babbage’s specs. But there are some design issues his “contact” has encountered and Jack needs to get into New Jersey to help with it. I really don’t want to get into this and I pushed him off to Ned – politely of course.

He’s not even allowed into Jersey now. Damn, I don’t think he realized how much of his freedom Maple Sap was going to cost him. Who would?